BUFFALO, N.Y., Aug. 21, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- OmniSeq, Inc., a molecular diagnostics subsidiary of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, announced today that it has entered into an exclusive distribution agreement with LabCorp® (NYSE:LH), a leading global life sciences company, for the distribution of its Immune Report Card SM and OmniSeq ComprehensiveSM clinical assays. The tests, performed by OmniSeq, will be exclusively offered by LabCorp to U.S.-based physicians through Integrated Oncology, a member of the LabCorp Specialty Testing Group, and globally to biopharmaceutical customers through Covance Drug Development. Both assays have received approval from New York State’s Clinical Laboratory Evaluation Program.
In addition, OmniSeq announced that Marcia Eisenberg, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of LabCorp Diagnostics, will join OmniSeq’s board of directors, and that LabCorp will participate in OmniSeq’s Series B financing round. The financing will be used to conduct ongoing retrospective and prospective clinical trials and to generate further evidence of the clinical utility of OmniSeq’s comprehensive genomic and immune profiling services.
“LabCorp is the ideal strategic partner to offer our Immune Report Card and OmniSeq Comprehensive assays through its leading diagnostics and drug development businesses,” said Mark Gardner, CEO of OmniSeq. “LabCorp is the only company that can offer our tests for diagnostic purposes to physicians and as clinical trial assays for correlative science to the world’s leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies.”
Immune Report Card is a first-in-kind comprehensive immune profiling test designed to inform oncologists regarding checkpoint inhibitor (CPI) treatment decisions. The Immune Report Card combines results for all common biomarker assays relevant for checkpoint inhibitors, as well as other informative assays. These include PD-L1, microsatellite instability, mutational burden as well as quantitative RNA next-generation sequencing that are essential to measure the immune response.
OmniSeq Comprehensive is a 144-gene, pan-cancer, next-generation sequencing tumor profiling diagnostic panel to guide oncology treatment decision-making. OmniSeq Comprehensive’s small sample requirements have enabled complete results from 98 percent of clinical samples received to date while providing actionable results for over 80 percent of patients tested, on par with other comprehensive genomic profiling assays.
Dr. Carl Morrison, president, founder and CSO of OmniSeq said, “For patients in the OmniSeq reference population, only 25 percent of patients were either PD-L1 high (tumor proportion score over 50 percent) or had a high mutational burden, but an additional 48 percent of patients highly expressed one or more targetable immune markers that are currently under evaluation in clinical trials. Thus, Immune Report Card may become an important tool to select immunotherapy combinations and to optimize likelihood of response to treatment.”
“LabCorp continues to take a first-to-market position among the new wave of cancer immunotherapy diagnostics, which have great promise to improve health and improve lives,” said Eisenberg. “OmniSeq is an innovator in deploying next-generation sequencing to provide comprehensive molecular profiling services. By combining OmniSeq’s technology with LabCorp’s unmatched companion diagnostics expertise, we will bring advances in precision medicine to many more physicians and biopharmaceutical partners.”
“The comprehensive immune profile provided by Immune Report Card will better support identification of the 20 to 40 percent of patients that are likely to respond to CPI monotherapy,” said Steve Anderson, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of Covance. “This powerful new test also will help to identify patients who may be eligible for the increasing number of immunotherapy clinical trials, helping to accelerate trial enrollment and the development of world-class diagnostics and therapies to improve the delivery of care.”
To learn more about OmniSeq Comprehensive or Immune Report Card, call 1-800-781-1259 or visit www.omniseq.com.
About OmniSeq
OmniSeq, an innovation of Roswell Park Cancer Institute, is a molecular diagnostic laboratory based in Buffalo, New York. OmniSeq endeavors to find the right drug or the right trial for every patient by improving access to better cancer treatment options through molecular profiling. OmniSeq offers two NGS-based assays: Immune Report CardSM and OmniSeq ComprehensiveSM. OmniSeq is proud to partner with academic researchers and pharmaceutical companies to support immuno-oncology diagnostics. For more information, call 1-800-781-1259 or visit www.omniseq.com.