NEW YORK – Adaptive Biotechnologies said today that it will provide its ClonoSeq assay to Amgen for use in drug development of blood cancer therapies.
Under the global four-year agreement, Adaptive will receive annual development fees, in addition to sequencing payments and regulatory milestones, in exchange for providing ClonoSeq for minimal residual disease (MRD) testing and analysis for ongoing and future clinical trials.
Adaptive's ClonoSeq test uses next-generation sequencing to assess disease status and has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to monitor MRD in patients with multiple myeloma and B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
"This pan-portfolio partnership reflects Amgen's confidence in the role that standardized NGS MRD testing with ClonoSeq plays in demonstrating drug efficacy in clinical trials and in day-to-day patient management," Adaptive CEO and Cofounder Chad Robins said in a statement.
The agreement builds on previous collaborations between the two firms that used ClonoSeq in studies of acute lymphoblastic leukemia and multiple myeloma. Seattle-based Adaptive will leverage data generated under this partnership to continue building evidence that supports MRD as a validated measure of patient outcomes across multiple novel treatments and blood cancers.
"It is critical to know a patient's MRD status because treating to MRD negativity has been shown to drive better clinical outcomes for patients in a variety of blood cancers," said Gregory Friberg, Amgen's VP of global development, in a statement. "Standardized, highly sensitive, molecular detection of MRD using ClonoSeq supports the development of potential cancer therapies that can help patients with blood cancer live longer."