NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Thermo Fisher Scientific and Cynvenio Biosystems have signed a distribution agreement for Cynvenio's LiquidBiopsy platform, the companies said today.
Cynvenio's LiquidBiopsy platform is designed to extract and isolate circulating tumor cells from a blood draw and prepare them for imaging and genomic analysis. According to Cynvenio's website, the platform uses a patented microfluidic chip to recover tumor cells from whole blood and can process up to four samples in under three hours.
The companies plan to combine Cynvenio's LiquidBiopsy platform with the Ion Chef for sample prep and the Ion Torrent PGM 318 chip and AmpliSeq Cancer Hot Spot Panel v2 to sequence 2,800 specific gene mutations.
Chris Linthwaite, president of Genetic, Medical and Applied Sciences at Thermo, said in a statement that Cynvenio's platform is a "compatible addition to our next-generation sequencing workflow, particularly as it applies to our evolving oncology strategy."
Cynvenio is also developing technology to analyze circulating cell-free tumor DNA. "As a company, we are dedicated to facilitating a new era of individualized medicine," Cynvenio's CEO André de Fusco said in a statement.Â