French-German Cooperation to Improve Personalized Cancer Care

A leading French oncology center will be collaborating with a German manufacturer of molecular diagnostic tests to develop new approaches to personalized cancer care.

The Gustave Roussy Cancer Campus (Paris, France), a medical center with 2,600 health professionals dedicated to cancer diagnosis and treatment that devotes 20% of its budget to research, will be cooperating with New Oncology (Cologne, Germany), the molecular diagnostics division of Blackfield AG (Cologne, Germany), a biotechnology company focusing on genome analytics, discovering modifiers of drug response, and developing next-generation diagnostics.

New Oncology developed the proprietary diagnostic platform NEOplus. This is an efficient, time-saving diagnostic assay that enables the parallel analysis of all therapy-relevant genomic alterations in minute amounts of paraffin embedded material. Within 10–15 working days NEOplus reliably and with high sensitivity detects mutations, amplifications, deletions, and translocations in over 80 oncogenes, tumor suppressors, and microsatellite DNA. In addition, NEOplus is suited to analyzing all solid tumor types.

“The dramatic responses seen in patients receiving targeted treatment have shifted the therapeutic paradigm to therapies which are based on the molecular characteristics of a given cancer. Thus, comprehensive genomic diagnosis of FFPE tissues is an important step to optimize clinical care to patients throughout the different lines of therapy” said Dr. Jean-Charles Soria, head of the drug development department at Gustave Roussy Cancer Campus.

“We are very pleased to partner with Gustave Roussy, Europe’s leading oncology center. We look forward to contributing New Oncology’s unique diagnostic platform enabling in-depth genetic profiling of tumor samples. Together, we expect to significantly improve personalized approaches for the benefit of cancer patients,” said Dr. Andreas Jenne, CEO of New Oncology.

Related Links:
Gustave Roussy Cancer Campus
New Oncology 
Blackfield AG