NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – ExonHit today said that it will receive a €418,000 ($553,000) grant from the European Union for its participation in the recently announced RESPONSIFY consortium.
The Paris-based firm said that it will provide its Genome Wide SpliceArray platform for analysis of patient transcriptomic profiles. The company added that it will be in charge of filing for IP protection for relevant molecular signatures and associated tests and ensuring CE marking and commercialization of predictive tests identified on the platform.
The RESPONSIFY consortium was recently launched with the aim of developing tests to indicate how therapies will affect individual patients and enable doctors to make better decisions about whether to use neoadjuvant therapies or provide treatments after surgery. The partners intend to identify predictive biomarkers for response to two common chemotherapeutic treatments for breast cancer, Herceptin (trastuzumab) and Avastin (bevacizumab).
The three-year project will include partners in Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK, and is being funded with approximately €6 million under the EU's 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development.
"This grant, which covers more than 70 percent of our costs in this project, enables us to add predictive tests in a key indication to our existing development portfolio," Loic Maurel, president of Exonhit's management board, said in a statement.