Company acquires rights to gene-based tests for colorectal cancer

Quebec City, QC – Biotech company DiagnoCure says it has secured the worldwide rights to two molecular tests for colorectal cancer and an option to a CLIA-certified US service laboratory to commercialize molecular cancer diagnostics tests.

The two tests for colorectal cancer in-licensed from Targeted Diagnostics & Therapeutics of Philadelphia, are based on the detection of GCC (guanylyl cyclase C), a gene that appears normally in cells lining the intestinal track, but has only been found outside the intestine when colorectal cancer has metastasized.

Initial research conducted by Dr Scott Waldman of Thomas Jefferson University of Philadelphia, showed GCC to be 95% to 100% accurate in detecting the spread or recurrence of colon cancer, in lymph nodes or blood. This led the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide more than $10 million in funding for two five-year multicentre clinical studies on 2,500 colorectal cancer patients. Interim results from the NIH-sponsored GCC lymph node study started in 2003 are expected later this year. “Preliminary data from the lymph node GCC study corroborated our initial research results,” said Dr Waldman, founder of TDT.

“We have just obtained what we believe to be the most promising tests for colorectal cancer,” said John Schafer, president and CEO of DiagnoCure. “With these tests and our PCA3 biomarker for prostate cancer, we now have high-value diagnostic tests for two of the top four most deadly forms of cancer.”