Biocept Enters Clinical Collaboration with Sarah Cannon Research Institute Focused on Screening ER+ Breast Cancer Patients

News & Finance
by Wesley Harry
June 27, 20150 comments

Biocept, Inc. (BIOC), a molecular diagnostics company commercializing and developing liquid biopsies to improve the detection and treatment of cancer, announced that it has entered into a clinical collaboration with Sarah Cannon Research Institute (SCRI), the research arm of Sarah Cannon, the global cancer enterprise of Hospital Corporation of America. The collaboration seeks to determine the clinical utility of detecting biomarkers present in circulating tumor cell (CTC) and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in blood samples for estrogen positive (ER+) breast cancer patients using Biocept’s OncoCEE™ technology.

“The goal of our collaboration with Sarah Cannon is to identify biomarkers that can be evaluated through a simple blood draw, without continually performing tissue biopsies on a patient,” said Biocept Senior Vice President and Senior Medical Director Veena Singh, MD. “By using a blood sample to screen these patients, we seek to help more patients qualify for new drug therapies that can more effectively target cancer.”

Biocept offers a highly sensitive and quantitative blood-based method for the detection and monitoring of biomarkers, which can lead to physicians making better informed treatment decisions based on genomic information.

“Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer in women, and more than two-thirds of cases express estrogen receptor (ER). It is encouraging to see targeted therapies for patients with ER+ disease, which include recently approved drugs as well as newer options currently available in clinical trials,” said Erika P. Hamilton, MD, Associate Director, Breast Cancer and Gynecologic Cancer Research Program at SCRI. “Understanding a patient’s ER status at the time of diagnosis or recurrence, and then monitoring throughout the patient’s treatment, is becoming increasingly more important.”

The collaboration is designed to demonstrate the utility of Biocept’s liquid biopsy diagnostics to detect biomarker status in cancer patients, and for the assessment of tumor treatment response over time.

About Biocept

Biocept, Inc. is a commercial-stage molecular diagnostics company that utilizes a proprietary technology platform and a standard blood sample to provide physicians with important prognostic and predictive information to enhance individual treatment of patients with cancer. Biocept’s technology platform captures and analyzes circulating tumor DNA, both in CTCs and in plasma (ctDNA). Biocept currently offers OncoCEE-GA™ for gastric cancer, OncoCEE-BR™ for breast cancer and OncoCEE-LU™ for non-small cell lung cancer, and plans to introduce CLIA-validated tests for colorectal, prostate and other solid tumors in the near term.

About Travis Garlick 1822 Articles
Been writing about and trading stocks since 2013. Manage a group of micro-cap investors on Facebook with over 15,000 members. Turned $8,500 into 185k the first year I started trading stocks and haven't looked back.