NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Trovagene today announced a partnership with Catholic Health Initiatives Center for Translational Research (CTR) to evaluate the effectiveness of Trovagene's cell-free DNA cancer monitoring diagnostics in clinical practice.
Under the terms of the agreement, Trovagene and CTR will conduct clinical validation studies, clinical utility studies, health economic studies, and other activities at CTR's partnered network of Catholic Health Initiatives hospitals, as well as CTR's facility at the University of Maryland Biopark Campus. The facility supports the discovery, development, and clinical implementation of personalized medicine technologies.
Trovagene said that key goals of the partnership with CTR include investigating the integration of Trovagene's platform technology into clinical management studies and assessing the technology's ability to improve overall cancer management.
The first study is anticipated to begin in the second quarter of 2014. If the results support the validity and utility of Trovagene's urine-based cell-free DNA tests for managing cancer, the partners will explore additional opportunities for possibly implementing the technology in CHI's healthcare system, Trovagene said.
Catholic Health Initiatives Institute for Research and Innovation, a subsidiary of CHI, is a corporate member of CTR.
In a statement, CTR National Director Jeffrey Otto said, "One of our goals at the CTR is to advance personalized medicine by investigating leading edge technologies, and this partnership will allow us to evaluate, and explore the potential to include Trovagene's cancer monitoring platform in CHI's treatment strategies."
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.