NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – GE Healthcare today announced a deal between its affiliate Clarient Diagnostic Services and GlaxoSmithKline to create a network of clinical laboratories to identify genetic mutations associated with different tumor types.
The collaboration aims to improve patient access to diagnostic testing and will enable GE to develop a broader laboratory and data analytics service resulting in greater efficiency in oncology precision medicine, it said. The service will be made available on a subscription basis and will be operated by GE Healthcare.
Through Clarient, GE Healthcare will initially use its clinical laboratory, pathology, and genomics expertise to certify labs and generate diagnostic data on metastatic melanoma patients. The first Clarient-certified labs will be located in several countries and are anticipated to be operational in early 2015.
Laboratory testing will initially focus on more than 70 melanoma-related mutations, such as BRAF V600E and V600K, and as the lab network develops, there will be the opportunity to expand testing beyond melanoma into other tumor types, GE Healthcare said.
Clarient's lab and data analytics service will be made available to other healthcare organizations through a subscription service, which is expected to be available next year. The lab service will be standardized and will enable pharmaceutical and other healthcare organizations to offer diagnostic testing where Clarient-certified labs are located. The data analytics service can be customized for specific desired results and can be used to provide geospatial analysis and aggregated epidemiological data. It will also be able to identify and match potential clients with clinical trials.
"This global network of high-quality diagnostic capability can be leveraged with confidence by all pharmaceutical companies in search of rigorously standardized oncology diagnostic services and data," Clarient CEO Cindy Collins said in a statement.
GSK Head of Oncology Companion Diagnostics and Disease Strategy Jonathan Pan added that his company aims to improve access to and the quality of cancer diagnostic testing, "which is a common problem seen with targeted oncology therapies and related companion diagnostics globally."
"The commercial testing infrastructure created through this collaboration will enable advanced diagnostic solutions that should improve how patient care is delivered, where the certified laboratories are operational," he added.
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.