NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Danaher this week announced its board approved a regular quarterly cash dividend of $.17 per share, payable on April 26 to shareholders of record on March 29.
PredictImmune announced the entry of its first product, PredictSure IBD, into NICE's Diagnostic Assessment Programme, which evaluates new diagnostic technologies and guides people working in the UK's National Health Service in making decisions about adopting new technologies. Cambridge, UK-based PredictImmune noted that selection into DAP requires the product to offer substantial benefits to the patient and healthcare system in comparison to existing practice. PredictSure IBD is a 17-gene qPCR test that can identify patients at risk of experiencing severe, relapsing disease, and who may benefit from early treatment with biologics.
Servier Group's e-health division, WeHealth by Servier, has reached a global distribution and development deal with San Diego-based CureMatch. WeHealth will make CureMatch's precision cancer decision support system to oncologists, clinics, and hospitals worldwide. The companies also will collaborate on software development and clinical trial programs.
Cadex Genomics said this week that it has launched a clinical study to validate the ability of Alibrex, a circulating tumor DNA assay, to predict early non-response to therapy in stage IV cancer patients.
Using qPCR technology, Alibrex detects retrotransposon elements on all 23 chromosomes.
Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers will be first to enroll patients as part of a multicenter study expected to involve more than 500 patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC).
Bill Haack, CEO of Cadex Genomics, said that the firm wants to make Alibrex available to physicians who treat stage IV mCRC and NSCLC cancer patients, so that the physicians can quickly determine when patients are not responding to therapy. Such a capability would allow more accurate and earlier informed decisions regarding other treatment options, he said.
Unlike mutational analysis tests, Alibrex does not predict which therapy may work before the therapy is administered. It determines when a therapy is not working shortly after a patient receives the first dose.
Kiyatec said this week that Inova Health System and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center are now participating sites for Kiyatec's US clinical study, 3D-PREDICT, to validate the company's test as a patient-specific predictor of response to cancer therapies in ovarian, glioblastoma, and rare cancer patients. The 3D-PREDICT study analyzes a patient's live cancer cells, grown in Kiyatec's laboratory within a biologically relevant 3D microenvironment, to determine whether those cells respond to guideline-recommended cancer drugs. Evidence from the company's earlier pilot study established a correlation between patient-specific predicted tumor response and actual patient clinical response to cancer therapy. Other participating study sites include Oregon Health and Science University and Greenville Health System in South Carolina.
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.