New Service for Circulating Tumor Cell Analysis Now Available

By LabMedica International staff writers
Posted on 18 Feb 2014
A new clinical sample procurement capability, including fresh blood draws from a wide range of cancer indications and tumor subtype profiles, improves circulating tumor cell analysis services.

The cutting-edge technology of the IsoFlux system for circulating tumor cell (CTC) enrichment and analysis is among the systems from Fluxion Biosciences (South San Francisco, CA, USA) designed to replace laborious and difficult assays by providing intuitive, easy-to-use instruments for cell-based analysis. Fluxion now also has the new capability to include full-service clinical sample procurement to expand its IsoFlux Discovery Services offering. Fluxion has been providing a broad range of analytic services using its IsoFlux system for CTC enrichment, including quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based assays. With this new capability, Fluxion can now also provide clinical sample procurement that includes fresh blood draws from a wide range of cancer indications and tumor subtype profiles, such as Her2+, KRAS+, and EGFR+ samples.

Image: Fluxion’s IsoFlux system with cutting-edge technology for circulating tumor cell enrichment (Photo courtesy of Fluxion Bioscences).

The services are available to diagnostic, biopharmaceutical, and research institutes that wish to conduct CTC studies with clinical samples on a contract basis. These are provided out of Fluxion’s South San Francisco reference laboratory using cutting-edge IsoFlux technology as well as the CTC experience of Fluxion scientific personnel. With this new offering, clients can now specify the number and types of clinical samples they wish to analyze and have them included in the study without having to set up clinical agreements. The clinical samples are shipped overnight to Fluxion’s laboratory and processed the day of arrival. Each sample is highly annotated with clinical information and obtained under Institutional Review Board (IRB) consent.

“After running our Discovery Services for some time now, we realized that obtaining prospective clinical samples for CTC studies is a major bottleneck for our clients. Setting up clinical agreements, obtaining IRB approval, and waiting for patient recruitment can slow things down considerably,” said Mike Schwartz, program director at Fluxion; “This new addition to our service offering will dramatically increase the speed of discovery for our clients, not to mention make it easier to source an entire study from a single vendor.”

Related Links:

Fluxion Biosciences
Isoflux



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