NEW YORK – BC Platforms said last week that it has been chosen as a partner for an EU project called Oncovalue that is headed by Helsinki University Hospital. The project, which involves 11 institutions and companies in Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal, and Italy and is funded with €7 million ($7.3 million) from the European Commission, will assess the real-life effectiveness of novel cancer therapies in real time by standardizing data processing in hospitals and measuring the cost effectiveness of cancer therapies. BC Platforms will create the technical architecture and provide data analysis to help transform unstructured patient data from medical notes and images into structured data and real-world evidence.
BC Platforms also said this week that an existing partnership with Euformatics and Oncompass Medicine has won a contract for the second phase of Instand-NGS4P, an EU-funded project to develop standardized next-generation sequencing workflows in oncology for a group of seven Central European hospitals. Financial terms were not disclosed for this second of three phases, which will run through January 2024 and involve prototyping of new workflows.
Thermo Fisher Scientific said this week that it has updated the Applied Biosystems 3500 and 3500xL Dx Genetic Analyzer capillary electrophoresis instruments to comply with Europe's In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation (IVDR). The IVDR-compliant versions and corresponding consumables are now available in most EU countries.
Jumpcode Genomics said this week that it has joined 10x Genomics' Compatible Partnership Program. Under that program, the Jumpcode Single Cell RNA Boost Kit is now verified to work with 10x Genomics' Chromium Single Cell Gene Expression platform. Jumpcode's CRISPRclean technology uses Cas9 and specifically designed guide RNAs to degrade abundant, uninformative sequences in NGS libraries.
Proteomics-based cancer precision medicine company Theralink Technologies said this week that the College of American Pathologists has accredited its reverse phase protein array laboratory in Golden, Colorado, based on results from a recent on-site inspection. The lab is now both CLIA-certified and CAP-accredited.
NGeneBio said last week that it has signed a deal with the National Unified Procurement company (NUPCO) in Saudi Arabia to supply its next-generation sequencing panel for hematological malignancies, HemeaccuTest. Under the contract, NGeneBio expects to deliver about 4,000 kits over two years, starting in Q1 2023, through a local distributor. The test, which analyzes DNA and RNA and comes with NGeneAnySys analysis software, is currently being evaluated at Saudi hospitals.
Caris Life Sciences said this week that Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center has joined its Precision Oncology Alliance, a network of leading cancer centers that collaborate to advance precision oncology and biomarker-driven research.
Currently boasting 74 institutions, the POA grants members early access to Caris' extensive database and artificial intelligence platform, as well as the opportunity to integrate with a growing portfolio of biopharma-sponsored biomarker directed trials. Participating centers also gain access to Caris' CODEai clinico-genomic database.
Invitae this week launched the Rare Patient Network, expanding the company's Ciitizen platform to pediatric patients with rare neurodevelopmental disorders. The network is meant to address challenges in identifying and recruiting such rare disease patients into clinical trials.
In Brief This Week is a selection of news items that may be of interest to our readers but had not previously appeared on GenomeWeb.