NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Veridex announced this week a deal with Laboratory Corporation of America to make its CellSearch circulating tumor cell test available in China.
LabCorp's Beijing central laboratory is now the first clinical reference laboratory in the country to offer CTC testing and will offer the test to researchers conducting clinical trials.
The agreement follows regulatory approval in China last month for the test.
Drug developers use CTCs as a way of determining the efficacy of new drug treatments, and according to Veridex, a Johnson & Johnson company, CellSearch can identify as little as one CTC in a tube of blood.
Veridex acquired CellSearch when it bought Immunicon in 2008. The system is cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration for marketing in the US.
"As the number of clinical trials in China continues to rise, drug companies conducting trials there now have another compelling reason to incorporate CTCs into their protocols," Robert McCormack, head of Technology Innovation for Veridex, said in a statement. "Local testing will provide faster results for clinical trial investigators."
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.