NEW YORK – Epic Sciences and Predicine said Thursday that they have entered into a global strategic partnership to offer biopharmaceutical companies access to liquid biopsy testing via both Predicine's circulating tumor DNA technology and Epic's circulating tumor cell platform.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Predicine's lead product, PredicineATLAS, is a next-generation sequencing ctDNA assay that analyzes 600 cancer-related genes and is performed in the company's CLIA-certified lab. The panel allows reporting of a spectrum of alterations and alteration patterns, including single-nucleotide variants, indels, copy number variation, DNA fusions, microsatellite instability, and tumor mutational burden.
Epic's CTC platform allows analysis of biomarkers in specific CTC populations, including testing of AR-V7, AR-N term, PSMA, ER, PR, alongside a variety of phenotypic or morphological analyses.
The companies said that the combination of both approaches is intended to allow pharmaceutical partners to measure both genotypic and phenotypic markers from a single blood draw when conducting drug trials.
"This molecular information is critical to understanding the current state of a patient's disease and offers the ability to monitor the cancer status, mechanism of action, and their response to a specific therapy," Epic President and CEO Lloyd Sanders said in a statement.
"Combining ctDNA and CTC from a single blood draw offers a complementary, multi-technology approach in comprehensive cancer profiling, monitoring therapy efficacy/disease burden, and assessing minimal residual disease," added Shidong Jia, Founder and CEO of Predicine.