NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Epic Sciences today announced it has entered into a collaboration with the Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium to apply its circulating tumor cell (CTC) technology in several clinical trials for new prostate cancer treatments.
Epic's liquid biopsy technology helps match patients to targeted therapies and monitor for drug resistance by analyzing CTCs. Providing real-time information about both the primary tumor and secondary metastases, CTCs reveal mutations in key regulatory and biochemical pathways to inform therapeutic development, therapy selection, and drug resistance mechanisms.
"Liquid biopsies could help accelerate the clinical development of new targeted therapies to treat prostate cancer by providing rapid access to ongoing and timely information about a patient's cancer on a cellular and molecular level," Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium CEO Jake Vinson said in a statement.
Financial and other details of the collaboration were not disclosed.
Epic Sciences has more than 30 collaborations with pharmaceutical companies and leading cancer research centers covering 67 clinical studies, the firm said in a statement.
In January 2014, Epic Sciences signed a collaboration with Laboratory Corporation of America to speed up sample processing for European clinical trials.
In January 2015, Epic Sciences' cancer diagnostics laboratory received CLIA certification.