NEW YORK – German molecular diagnostics company Mainz Biomed said on Wednesday that it has teamed up with Australia-based precision microbiome company Microba Life Sciences to discover novel microbiome markers for pancreatic cancer screening.
Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.
Under the agreement, Mainz Biomed and Microba will conduct a pilot research project, expected to run through 2023, utilizing Microba's proprietary Community Profiler metagenomic sequencing technology and bioinformatic tools that can produce comprehensive and accurate species profiles of human gastrointestinal samples.
Mainz Biomed has already been developing an early-stage pancreatic cancer screening test, called PancAlert, that uses multiplex real-time PCR to detect genetic biomarkers in stool samples, which it hopes to complement with microbiome biomarkers.
Mainz Biomed CEO Guido Baechler said in a statement that the goal of the partnership is to develop a first-in-class screening test for this deadly cancer.
"Given the growing understanding of the microbiome's role in pancreatic cancer, we believe it's of paramount importance to explore integrating diagnostic microbiome biomarkers into the test as it advances to the clinical stage of development and as such, are delighted to align with a global leader in sourcing and analyzing microbiome-generated species and datasets," Baechler said.
Mainz Biomed is currently commercializing ColoAlert, a multiplex PCR-based test for colorectal cancer from stool samples. The firm is selling the test in select international territories and initiated a US pivotal clinical study dubbed ReconAAsense in late 2022 for a CRC screening test that may integrate the company's portfolio of novel mRNA biomarkers.