New Collaborations on Cancer Biomarkers

In its quest to discover novel biomarkers for the development of tests that screen for cancer at an early stage, a company called Orion Genomics (St. Louis, MO, USA) has initiated several new collaborations with researchers at Washington University (St. Louis, MO, USA).

In the new collaborations, scientists will focus on the most common cancers, including lung, breast, cervical, prostate, and ovarian cancer, seeking biomarkers that indicate the presence of cancer and how it will respond to certain therapies. These biomarkers, called Second Code biomarkers by Orion, refer to DNA methylation patterns that provide information on the regulation of genes. The research is intended to enable Orion to develop tests that detect trace amounts of methylated tumor DNA in easy-to-access tissues such as blood serum, biopsies, and cell scraps. The company expects to market the tests within three years.

"We are looking for specific molecular biomarkers that explain why patients with cancer respond differently to the same course of treatment,” explained Dr. Howard McLeod, a scientific consultant for Orion. "We are optimistic that these biomarkers will greatly impact clinical practice by enabling doctors to more accurately match therapies to patients.”

Orion's new pipeline of oncology diagnostics will be enabled by the company's MethylScreen technology, an enzyme-based real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology that is compatible with testing platforms widely used today. The sensitivity of the screen enables Orion's scientists to measure unique qualities of epigenetic DNA that are indicative of disease progression, allowing for the development of oncology diagnostics that not only diagnose for cancer but provide critical information on disease progression.




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