NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Circulating tumor cell-based diagnostics firm Epic Sciences today announced an agreement with Laboratory Corporation of America aimed at speeding up sample processing for Epic's technology in support of European clinical trials.
LabCorp's Central Laboratory in Mechelen, Belgium will process samples for Epic's clinical trial partners and customers as part of the deal. The samples will then be sent to Epic's laboratory in La Jolla, Calif. for downstream detection and molecular characterization of CTCs.
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
In a statement, Epic President and CEO Murali Prahalad said that the deal "will provide an important access point for all European and Middle Eastern clinical trials sample processing, deposition, and banking. Working with LabCorp, we have been able to rapidly validate our technology and expand our clinical trial services to Europe for our pharma partners and clinical trial customers."
Epic's CTC technology can isolate, count, and characterize CTCs from a blood sample in order to identify patients who are appropriate for clinical trials and certain therapeutics, and to better understand treatment effectiveness, disease progression, and metastatic risk. The San Diego-based company is currently involved in 35 individual oncology trials, it said.