NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – MDxHealth has exclusively licensed Ghent University's proprietary molecular diagnostic visualization technology to enable the detection of cancer associated epigenetic changes in both tissue and liquid samples, the company said today.
Separately, the two parties forged a research and development agreement to develop in vitro diagnostic kits and laboratory-developed tests based on the technology.
Under the terms of agreement, MDxHealth has an exclusive license to use Ghent's diagnostic visualization technology for urological cancer, and under the research agreement, the two will first focus on validating cancer-specific biomarkers for prostate and bladder cancer.
"The exclusively licensed technology and R&D collaboration has the potential to significantly enhance our current tests and ultimately provide a platform to expand into other difficult to diagnose cancers in the future," MDxHealth CEO Jan Groen said in a statement.
Ghent's technology uses biomarker-specific probes in a methylation in situ hybridization (MISH) platform to target and visualize methylation changes associated with cancer. MISH harnesses chromogens and fluorescent dyes that cause the targeted biomarkers to glow when methylated, such that they can be seen within a histological context.