Belgian diagnostics company Biocartis Group NV and Singpores A*STAR ETPL have kicked off development of a multimodal breast cancer assay designed to guide therapy selection in personalised medicine.

Both parties did not disclose any information about the worth of their five-year strategic partnership aimed at the development of a PCR assay for breast cancer detection running on Biocartis' diagnostic Idylla(TM) platform. This first assay selected for development under the partnership is a solid multimodal FFPE biopsy assay, aimed at supporting optimal therapy selection decisions for Her-2-positive, hormone receptor-positive, and undisclosed breast cancer target-positive breast cancer patients, the companies said.

Under the terms of the agreement, ETPL and Biocartis will co-invest in the development of several jointly selected tests. Biocartis will commercialise the tests under its own label, while ETPL will act as a development partner through Singapore's Diagnostics Development (DxD) Hub.

Breast cancer is the the largest segment of the cancer diagnostics market, with expected sales of US$13.1bn by 2020. According to Biocartis, an increasing number of targeted and hormone therapies for breast cancer drives the demand for assays that guide therapy selection. While Her2 may occur in up to 20% of breast cancers, according to optimistic estimates, hormone receptor expression is estimated to occur in poentially two-thirds of women with breast cancer.

While most health systems have not yet switched to reimbursement of genome sequencing-led cancer profiling, multimodal biomarker testing is currently diagnostic state of the art. Some diagnostic companies, however, are already preparing to launch sequencing based biomarker detection to improve patient stratification.

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Biocartis and A*STAR ink breast cancer R&D contract - European Biotechnology