NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – ExonHit Therapeutics and BioMerieux are discontinuing their collaboration aimed at identifying biomarkers and developing tests for colon cancer, ExonHit announced today.
The decision reportedly comes on the heels of a recent review of scientific and clinical data from the colon cancer screening research program.
However, the companies plan to continue working together to find biomarkers and develop tests for early-stage prostate cancer.
"ExonHit's technology was able to produce a robust and reproducible test however, the final results from the colon cancer program did not reach the level of performance we were aiming to achieve," Loic Maurel, president of ExonHit's management board, said in a statement. "Therefore, we have decided together with BioMerieux to focus our efforts on the prostate cancer program."
As reported by GenomeWeb Daily News sister publication BioArray News reported last month, ExonHit is also developing microarray-based test for Alzheimer's disease that it hopes to launch in Europe early next year and in the US sometime in 2012.