Bayer HealthCare Collaborates with Sysmex Inostics on Companion Diagnostics

Bayer HealthCare (Leverkusen, Germany) has entered into a collaboration agreement with the diagnostic company Sysmex Inostics GmbH (Hamburg, Germany) for the development of companion diagnostics for targeted cancer therapies. The blood-based companion diagnostic solutions offered by Sysmex Inostics will complement anticancer agents developed by Bayer.

The companion diagnostic tests are used to discover which patients are more likely to respond to a particular anticancer agent. Under the agreement, Sysmex Inostics will develop blood-based diagnostic tests based on its BEAMing technology. These tests enable a very sensitive analysis of circulating tumor DNA shed into the blood stream from tumors. This provides a noninvasive alternative to tumor biopsy to analyze the mutational status of a patient’s tumor. The noninvasive diagnostic blood tests allow the selection of an appropriate therapeutic agent without the need of further surgeries or tumor biopsies. The blood-based diagnostic DNA tests can be performed on patients where no tumor tissue is available.

An initial blood-based companion diagnostic test will be applied in clinical trials to select patients more likely to achieve a clinical benefit to an investigational anticancer agent developed by Bayer HealthCare. The partnership also provides a framework for further collaboration projects to develop molecular blood-based diagnostic tests in support of additional targeted cancer therapies. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Sysmex Inostics, a subsidiary of Sysmex Corporation, is a molecular diagnostic company whose core competency is mutation detection utilizing highly sensitive technologies such as Plasma-Sequencing and BEAMing. Sysmex Inostics companion diagnostics (CDx) team offers services for the development of non-invasive plasma DNA based in vitro diagnostic (IVD) tests supported by a network of partners to cover the entire IVD development process.

Bayer HealthCare, a subgroup of Bayer AG, is a global enterprise with core competencies in the fields of health care, agriculture, and high-tech materials. The company combines the global activities of the Animal Health, Consumer Care, Medical Care, and Pharmaceuticals divisions. Bayer HealthCare’s aim is to discover, develop, manufacture, and market products that will improve human and animal health worldwide.

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