NEW YORK ─ John Theurer Cancer Center (JTCC) and Genomic Testing Cooperative (GTC) said Wednesday that they have inked an agreement to establish a state-of-the-art, next generation sequencing laboratory for molecular profiling of cancers.
This NGS laboratory, to be located at JTCC, which is part of Hackensack Meridian Health Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, will serve all physicians within Regional Cancer Care Associates (RCCA), a network of cancer care professionals in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Maryland. More than 30,000 new cancer patients are treated by RCCA physicians annually.
Financial and other terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
JTCC will perform molecular profiling of all cancers in its patients with solid tumors or blood cancers. The results of such profiling will facilitate precision medicine by matching patients with therapies that target the molecular abnormalities driving the growth of their cancers, according to JTCC and GTC, a molecular diagnostic company based in Irvine, California.
The JTCC NGS laboratory will adapt validated tests developed by GTC for DNA and RNA profiling. GTC said it anticipates that the collaboration will allow it to codevelop new tests with JTCC by utilizing clinical and outcomes data from the cancer center.
Paired DNA and RNA profiling is increasingly employed in genomics research to uncover molecular mechanisms underlying the development and progression of disease and to explore personal genotype and phenotype correlations.
"The sophisticated algorithms and artificial intelligence software used for analyzing sequencing data and linking them to clinical data are based on deep knowledge in technical and clinical needs," Andre Goy, chair of JTCC, said in a statement.