Epic Sciences announces six pharma circulating tumor cell collaborations.
Epic Sciences, Inc. (“Epic”), a privately held cancer diagnostics company, announced today that it has established collaborations with six pharmaceutical partners employing Epic’s proprietary circulating tumor cell (“CTC”) technology. The partners include two of the top four pharmaceutical companies worldwide. In total, the collaborations include 12 clinical trials involving over 40 distinct projects measuring 18 different protein or genomic tumor markers on CTCs. The clinical trials include sites in the US, Europe and Asia with over 1500 patients and 2500 clinical samples in prostate, lung, breast, pancreatic and ovarian cancers.
These partnerships leverage Epic’s unique platform to identify and characterize rare cells in fluids. Most CTC technologies employ a physical enrichment strategy based on a few markers thought to be present on the majority of cancer cells. Because cancer cells are heterogeneous, Epic chose a different path which physically retains all of the cells and identifies the CTCs using multi-parametric analysis in a No Cell Left Behind® strategy.
“Given that we have been operating in stealth mode, Epic has been pleased by the extraordinary level of interest and clinical deal flow around our CTC detection and characterization platform,” said Dr. David Nelson, president and CEO of Epic Sciences.
“These collaborations with leading pharmaceutical companies provide a strong and diverse basis for Epic’s companion diagnostic pipeline,” said Nelson. “By using Epic to molecularly characterize CTCs, our pharmaceutical partners are looking to improve the success rate, decrease the cost, and expedite commercial launch of their targeted therapies. Payers are also expected to gain by achieving better health economics as care evolves to provide the right drug to the right patient at the right time. Ultimately, of course, we hope that the biggest beneficiaries will be all of the patients whose individual outcomes are improved by personalized medicine guided by Epic’s diagnostic products.”
About Epic Sciences
At Epic Sciences, we develop clinically proven predictive tests to detect and monitor cancer at the individual cell level. With a proprietary rare-cell detection engine, we provide insights to clinical, biotech, pharmaceutical and academic teams on how cancer emerges, mutates and remits so they can make pivotal decisions at every point in patient treatment with greater certainty. Recognizing the unique nature of each person’s cancer, we offer truly personalized diagnostic tests, while being non-invasive for the patient.
We have developed the first clinically proven predictive test for metastatic castration-resistant prostrate cancer (mCRPC), the Epic AR-V7 test. Using the same rare-cell detection platform and Epic’s biobank of over 30,000 blood samples, each profiled with predictive biomarkers, we partner with leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, major cancer centers, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to pursue additional predictive tests for breast, ovarian, colon and other cancers and diseases. Our mission is to revolutionize cancer care and therapies to make them as precise, safe and life-sustaining as humanly possible.
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Epic Sciences Media Contact: Jessica Yingling, Ph.D., Little Dog Communications Inc., jessica@litldog.com,+1.858.344.8091