NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Ventana Medical Systems today announced it is co-exclusively sublicensing certain patents and patents applications from Gen-Probe for the worldwide in vitro diagnostic rights to measure ERG protein expression by immunohistochemistry in prostate tissue.
Ventana, a Roche company, said that the license complements its existing worldwide co-exclusive sublicense under certain patents and patent applications for in situ hybridization for measuring ETS gene rearrangements, such as ERG gene rearrangements in tissue.
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.
"We believe ERG testing by IHC and ISH will play an important role in novel diagnostic, prognostic, and predictive tests for prostate cancer," Ventana President Mara Aspinall said in a statement. "This license gives us a unique position for this important biomarker as we see the opportunity to incorporate the ERG marker into Ventana assays that can benefit hundreds of thousands of prostate cancer patients each year."
In its portfolio, Ventana has ERG IVD assays, including assays for ERG protein via IHC and for ERG gene rearrangements via Quantum Dot FISH, and the company is developing multivariate assays for novel clinical indications, it said.