Covance will process patient samples at its Singapore site, and then send samples to Epic's clinical laboratory in San Diego, which has recently been licensed under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) of 1988, for downstream detection and molecular characterization of CTCs. The partnership expands on a previous contract initiated last year between the two companies for European clinical trials.
"We are excited to expand access to Epic's circulating tumor cell technology from Europe to Asia," said Steven Anderson, Chief Scientific Officer of Covance. "Epic's technology, which can robustly and reproducibly detect, quantitate and molecularly characterize circulating tumor cells, is a significant tool available to support oncology clinical trials."
Epic is also developing high-definition diagnostic tests to provide clinically relevant information about how a patient's cancer changes over time, which will allow for improved therapy selection and early drug resistance detection. For instance, Epic's “no cell left behind” technology analyzes approximately six million cells across more than 90 parameters to capture and analyze possible types of circulating tumor cells.
Epic's technology can incorporate CTC enumeration, quantitative protein biomarker analysis and single-cell genomic analysis by next generation sequencing (NGS) or fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) to give a comprehensive picture of a patient's cancer.
"The expansion of the partnership with LabCorp will provide an important access point for all oncology clinical trials conducted in Asia and meet the global demand for Epic's circulating tumor cell technology," said Murali Prahalad, president and CEO of Epic Sciences. "For Epic's clinical trial partners and customers, we provide significant, actionable information on patient matching, treatment effectiveness and disease progression to streamline clinical trials for new targeted cancer therapies and to develop essential companion diagnostics."