The company signed separate agreements with AstraZeneca, Merck, Merck KGaA, and Pfizer to create the panel, which is expected to help speed drug development.
A subset of mutation-associated neoantigens appeared to be lost from lung or head and neck tumors that became resistant to anti-PD1 or anti-PD1 and anti-CLTA4 therapy.
The firm's vaccine, which previously led to tumor regression in a patient with metastatic breast cancer, is scheduled to enter clinical trials in 2017.
The platform will be designed to gather all necessary data from a single RNA extraction, eliminating the need for flow cytometry, genomic sequencing, and expression profiling.
Tempus will sequence and analyze pancreatic and melanoma cancer data from Penn patients to identify patterns associated with a positive response to treatment.
Merck is hoping NanoString's multiplex platform can support gene expression signatures that will better predict which patients will respond to checkpoint inhibitors like its Keytruda.
Clinical MDx firm OmniSeq has been an early-access user of the research-use-only assay and is working on validating it to predict checkpoint inhibitor response.
A bill passed by a US House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee would give scientific agencies including the National Science Foundation boosts in funding.
