Personal Genome Diagnostics Inc. (PGDx) has received a National Cancer Institute (NCI) contract to develop a novel diagnostic for helping identify patients who are most likely to benefit from cancer drugs called checkpoint inhibitors.
"Immuno-oncology drugs have shown great promise, but they are expensive and do not work for all patients. Affordable and accessible methods to identity patients likely to benefit are urgently needed,” Mark Sausen, PGDx vice president of R&D, said in a statement. “This NCI contract leverages our extensive experience and proprietary approaches for studying tumor neoantigens and developing immuno-oncology therapies, combined with PGDx's pioneering work in developing liquid biopsies for cancer genomic testing."
Sausen noted the contract gives the company an opportunity to work with various pharmaceutical partners to develop the MutatorDETECT assay, which would help identify patients for clinical trials.
"Over the past several years we have collaborated with pharmaceutical partners to evaluate the effects of mutational load by retrospectively applying whole exome sequencing and our ImmunoSelect analyses to clinical samples,” Sausen said.
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