NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Transgenomic today said it has started a collaboration with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to assess Transgenomic's Ice Cold-PCR.
The mutation detection technology will be evaluated for its effectiveness in analyzing DNA isolated from circulating tumor cells in blood samples from patients with advanced cancer, Transgenomic said. The partners will study the use of Ice Cold-PCR to determine the presence of biomarkers before, during, and after targeted therapy, which may help guide physicians in treating patients with specific cancer drugs.
The study will be jointly supervised by Filip Janku, assistant professor in the department of investigational cancer therapeutics at MD Anderson; Katherine Richardson, vice president of R&D at Transgenomic; and Marcia Lewis, VP of biomarker development at the Omaha, Neb.-based company.
Financial and other terms were not disclosed.
Ice Cold-PCR is an assay technology that can enrich low levels of mutant DNA so that tumor biomarkers can be detected by DNA sequencing of the CTCs, Transgenomic said.