NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) — Transgenomic said today that it has signed a licensing deal with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for exclusive worldwide rights to develop and commercialize multiplexed versions of its ICE COLD-PCR technology.
The new license covers all fields and applications of the multiplexed technology, enabling the simultaneous detection of multiple DNA mutations from a single liquid sample such as blood or urine, Transgenomic said.
The deal also expands on an existing license between Transgenomic and Dana-Farber for ICE COLD-PCR, which stands for "improved and complete enrichment-coamplification at lower denaturation temperature PCR" and was developed in the laboratory of Dana-Farber researcher Mike Makrigiorgos.
In 2009, Omaha, Neb.-based Transgenomic signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Dana-Farber to use COLD-PCR combined with Sanger sequencing and for mitochondrial DNA analysis. They followed that agreement in 2011 with an expanded license to include ICE COLD-PCR and the analysis of COLD-PCR products by pyrosequencing.
ICE COLD-PCR selectively focuses on only the mutated DNA in tumors that is useful for cancer diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment. It detects mutated DNA at 100- to 400-fold greater sensitivity than conventional approaches and enables identification of all tumor mutations, known and unknown, the company said.
"Multiplexing makes our ICE COLD-PCR technology far more efficient and allows us to assemble targeted panels of relevant mutations that can be simultaneously analyzed from a single sample," Transgenomic CEO Paul Kinnon said in a statement. "This should greatly increase its availability for routine use in cancer therapy, as well as for our biopharmaceutical customers who plan to use [multiplexed] ICE COLD-PCR to develop new cancer treatments and companion diagnostics."