INDUSTRIAL IMPACT
PRNewswire | May 22, 2023
Menarini Silicon Biosystems (MSB), a pioneer of liquid biopsy and single cell technologies, announced today its partnership with Alivio Health. This new agreement opens the door to preferred access for Alivio Health clients and providers to the valuable information offered by the CELLSEARCH CTC tests, which allow longitudinal monitoring of cancer patients at any time during the course of the disease. Starting from a simple blood draw, CELLSEARCH CTC tests provide valuable information on a patient's cancer at diagnosis and during therapy, which enables doctors to make more informed and timely decisions to optimize their therapeutic strategy.
According to Daryl Spinner Vice President, Market Access and Reimbursement at Menarini Group "we are delighted by this new partnership that makes it easier for Alivio Health's members to access and their physicians to order our tests. All members of Alivio Health can now benefit with preferred access and pricing from the improved and more rapid diagnostic information and therapeutic approaches these tests inform". Indeed, MSB's Gold Standard CELLSEARCH® CTC test is the first and only clinically validated, FDA-cleared test for capturing and enumerating circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in cancer patients with metastatic breast, prostate and colorectal cancer to help inform clinical decision-making. New CELLSEARCH LDTs (Laboratory Developed Tests) are also available to clinicians for CTC enumeration and HER2 and PD-L1 targeted therapy-associated biomarker analysis in patients with various solid tumors, as well as for patients with melanoma and multiple myeloma. The minimally invasive nature of the CELLSEARCH tests makes them convenient to monitor patients with serial CTC testing for real-time clinical information at any time during the course of their disease.
The new partnership will benefit the members of Alivio Health whose main mission is to facilitate access to the right test at the right time. Specifically, among the over 200,000 members of Alivio Health's participating health plans, patients with cancer will now have access to more accurate, timely, affordable and reimbursable MSB liquid biopsy tests, so that they may benefit from a more informed therapeutic strategy.
For Fabio Piazzalunga, President and CEO of MSB, "we are particularly excited by this opportunity to reach out to a broader pool of professionals and patients thanks to this new partnership. As we pursue our relentless endeavors to advance liquid biopsy tests that can aid in the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of patients, we are also eager to ensure that our technology is accessible to the clinicians who can prescribe them". For both MSB and Alivio Health, this partnership will contribute to their common and primary ambition, which is to expand access to innovative testing approaches that allow providers to better understand the disease dynamics of their patients and therefore offer improved care to patients.
About Menarini Silicon Biosystems (MSB)
MSB offers unique rare-cell technologies and solutions that provide clinical researchers with access to unparalleled resolution in the study of cells and their molecular characterization.
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MEDTECH, INDUSTRIAL IMPACT
Businesswire | April 21, 2023
Twist Bioscience Corporation a company enabling customers to succeed through its offering of high-quality synthetic DNA using its silicon platform, today announced a collaboration with Astellas Pharma Inc. by which Astellas will license a suite of Twist’s VHH antibody libraries to be used by Astellas for drug discovery and development.
“We are pleased to extend our collaboration with Astellas to three agreements across two groups within the company, showcasing our ability to meet the varying needs of our customers and support their success,” said Emily M. Leproust, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Twist Bioscience. “This latest collaboration with Astellas demonstrates how Twist can enable our customers to grow their pipelines both externally with our antibody discovery services and by supporting their internal discovery with our highly specific and potent antibody libraries.”
Under the terms of the agreement, Astellas will license a suite of Twist’s VHH libraries for a period of five years and will use the libraries to conduct research and development activities. Twist will receive an upfront payment and will be eligible to receive annual maintenance fees and fees per product through payments associated with specific clinical and commercial milestones. Twist will also be eligible to receive royalty payments on product sales.
Twist VHH Antibody Libraries
Antibodies contain two variable domains, the heavy and the light chains. A VHH antibody, also known as a single domain antibody, is the antigen binding domain of the heavy chain, with three complementary determining regions (CDRs), or areas where antigens bind to the antibody. Twist’s VHH libraries use novel methods that combine synthetic and natural approaches to maximize diversity up to 10 billion for each library, creating high quality VHH libraries for use against any protein target. The small size of the VHH antibodies allow them to access targets that traditional antibodies cannot, with tight binding affinity. The modular nature of VHH antibodies supports creation of bi- or multi-specific antibodies ideal for developing next generation therapies specific to oncology, autoimmune disease and virology. During the pandemic, Twist published on the use of these libraries to neutralize SARS-CoV-2.
About Twist Bioscience Corporation
Twist Bioscience is a leading and rapidly growing synthetic biology and genomics company that has developed a disruptive DNA synthesis platform to industrialize the engineering of biology. The core of the platform is a proprietary technology that pioneers a new method of manufacturing synthetic DNA by “writing” DNA on a silicon chip. Twist is leveraging its unique technology to manufacture a broad range of synthetic DNA-based products, including synthetic genes, tools for next-generation sequencing (NGS) preparation, and antibody libraries for drug discovery and development. Twist is also pursuing longer-term opportunities in digital data storage in DNA and biologics drug discovery. Twist makes products for use across many industries including healthcare, industrial chemicals, agriculture and academic research.
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CELL AND GENE THERAPY, INDUSTRIAL IMPACT
Prnewswire | April 12, 2023
Mission Bio, Inc., the pioneer in high-throughput single-cell DNA and multi-omics analysis, announced that it has entered into an agreement with Fulgent Genetics a technology-based company with a well-established clinical diagnostic business and a therapeutic development business. Fulgent Genetics is now able to offer single-cell multi-omics on the Tapestri Platform on its fully customizable menu of services, including whole genome, whole exome, RNA sequencing, tumor profiling, methylation sequencing, liquid biopsy, single cell sequencing, spatial biology, and pathology services to support its growing pharma client demands. Additionally, Fulgent Genetics will evaluate the Tapestri Platform for applications in clinical development to streamline the drug development and approval process.
Over the last ten to fifteen years, there has been a paradigm shift in clinical trials towards precision oncology by using biomarkers to select or enrich trial cohorts. The Tapestri Platform's ability to do single-cell analysis of genotype and phenotype from the same cell can provide the sensitivity and resolution for biomarker discovery unattainable by current bulk methods. Single-cell resolution can reveal treatment resistance mechanisms that may help to better stratify patients in clinical trials. While on treatment, residual levels of disease can be detected with the high sensitivity of single-cell analysis. Characterizing clonal heterogeneity and tracking clonal evolution during treatment can potentially guide adaptive and rational combination therapies for better patient stratification and better clinical trial outcomes.
"The increasing adoption of the Tapestri Platform for translational research and clinical development by many cancer centers and global pharma companies demonstrates the necessity of single-cell multi-omics," said Dr. Hanlin (Harry) Gao M.D., Ph.D., D.A.B.M.G., F.A.C.M.G., Chief Scientific Officer of Fulgent Genetics. "The relationship between Fulgent Genetics and Mission Bio will make it easier and faster for biopharmaceutical customers to generate data for more precise clinical trials."
"Fulgent Genetics' full scope, end-to-end service and comprehensive genomic portfolio is the perfect one-stop shop for pharma customers," said Todd Druley, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Medical Officer of Mission Bio. "While some pharma customers can and still do partner with us through our internal Pharma Assay Development (PAD) services, this agreement provides another option for them to leverage the single-cell multi-omics expertise and full suite of solutions offered by Fulgent Genetics, particularly as they complete the validation of the Tapestri Platform in their CAP CLIA lab in the near future."
Customers today have access to the Tapestri Platform and its full breadth of single-cell multi-omics and scMRD assays through Fulgent Genetics' labs.
About Mission Bio
Mission Bio is a life sciences company that accelerates discoveries and cures for a wide range of diseases by equipping researchers with the tools they need to better measure and predict our resistance and response to new therapies. Mission Bio's multi-omics approach improves time-to-market for new therapeutics, including innovative cell and gene therapies that provide new pathways to health. Founded in 2014, Mission Bio has secured investment from Novo Growth, Cota Capital, Agilent Technologies, Mayfield Fund, and others.
The company's Tapestri Platform gives researchers around the globe the power to interrogate every molecule in a cell together, providing a comprehensive understanding of activity from a single sample. Tapestri is the only commercialized multi-omics platform capable of analyzing DNA and protein simultaneously from the same sample at single-cell resolution.
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