BioTheranostics said this week that Mayo Clinic and Mayo Medical Laboratories will offer the company's CancerType ID molecular cancer classification test to aid in the management of patients with metastatic cancer.
Under the agreement, CancerType ID will be available to Mayo Clinic physicians and patients, as well as to more than 5,000 hospitals around the world served by Mayo Medical Laboratories.
CancerType ID is a real-time PCR-based test that is designed to help predict tumor type in patients with metastatic cancers, which affect more than 400,000 patients in the United States each year and are among the most difficult to diagnose and treat. According to the company, the test is 87 percent accurate for identifying 28 main tumor types and 82 percent accurate for identifying 50 subtypes.
Laboratory Corporation of America said this week that it is now offering Qiagen's Therascreen KRAS RGQ PCR kit, a companion diagnostic that was recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for certain colorectal cancer patients.
Therascreen KRAS is the only FDA-approved companion diagnostic for use with Erbitux (cetuximab) for patients with KRAS mutation-negative EGFR-expressing metastatic colorectal cancer. LabCorp is offering the assay under the name KRAS Gene Mutation Analysis.
By using the test, physicians can identify patients who would benefit from treatment with Erbitux. An estimated 110,000 people develop advanced colorectal cancer in the United States each year, and a majority of them will be KRAS-mutation negative and eligible for Erbitux therapy, LabCorp said.