Epic Sciences Appoints Greg Lucier as Chairman of the Board of Directors

Print 31 July 2014

SAN DIEGO – July 30, 2014 – Epic Sciences, Inc. (“Epic”), a private biotech company that designs and develops novel diagnostics to personalize and advance the treatment and management of cancer, announced today the appoint of Gregory T. Lucier as chairman of Epic’s board of directors. Mr. Lucier was previously chairman and CEO of Life Technologies (formerly Invitrogen). Mr. Lucier joins Epic’s board of directors to provide expertise as Epic commercializes its circulating rare cell analysis platform with special focus on the development of products and services to detect circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in cancer. 

“Epic’s CTC technology is at the center of an area of diagnostics that is poised to make a meaningful impact on patients’ lives by delivering genetic and molecular information to match patients to cancer therapies and monitor for drug resistance in real time,” said Mr. Lucier. “The Epic technology and team are the most advanced in delivering comprehensive and actionable information for cancer management from a single blood test.”

“Greg led Invitrogen from a cutting edge tools provider and transformed it into a global life sciences company that enabled the era of personalized medicine,” said Murali Prahalad, Ph.D., president and CEO of Epic Sciences. “We look forward to his guidance as we grow our clinical trial partnerships with pharmaceutical companies to include the development of on-label, marketed companion diagnostics. In addition, his guidance will be critical as we advance multiple clinical studies for 510(k) fillings to accelerate our pipeline of independent diagnostic tests that enable more targeted therapy selection and therapy staging to improve patient outcomes.” 

Epic is developing highly sensitive and informative diagnostic tests to rapidly quantify the proteomic and genomic changes that occur over time during the treatment of a patient’s cancer, from a minimally invasive liquid biopsy. With a simple blood draw, Epic’s “no cell left behind” approach analyzes approximately six million cells across more than 90 parameters to capture and analyze all possible types of CTCs. CTCs are the most advanced blood-based biomarkers that can encompass the real-time genetic and molecular profiles of both primary tumors and metastases. For clinical and pharma partners, Epic provides a report that can incorporate CTC enumeration, quantitative protein biomarker analysis and single-cell genomic analysis by next generation sequencing (NGS) or fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH). The information provided by Epic’s report can be used to monitor and personalize cancer treatments at every clinical decision point. 

Gregory T. Lucier was chairman and CEO of Life Technologies, a global life sciences company acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific for $15.4 billion in 2014. During Mr. Lucier’s 11-year tenure at Life Technologies, he led the company from a small start-up known as Invitrogen in 2003, directed the acquisition and merger of Invitrogen with Applied Biosystems in 2008 into the renamed Life Technologies, and then transformed the organization by 2013 into a global, world-leading biotechnology firm with 50,000 products, 10,000 employees and nearly $4 billion in sales in more than 180 countries. Serving in his leadership role, Mr. Lucier was responsible for fostering a culture of excellence at Life Technologies, and applied his more than 25 years of strategic management experience to help champion an era of personalized medicine.

About Circulating Tumor Cells

Circulating tumor cells are cells that escape from solid tumors and enter the bloodstream where they travel and eventually cause cancer metastasis. Today, solid cancers are largely characterized by invasive biopsies. Such biopsies are often ineffective in understanding metastatic risk, disease progression or treatment effectiveness and are of extremely limited utility in late-stage, multi-focal disease. A blood test that can accurately detect and profile biomarkers on CTCs can be conducted repeatedly and can give essential, real-time information about disease status to tailor treatments to a patient’s specific tumor.

About Epic Sciences

Epic Sciences, Inc. is developing novel diagnostics to personalize and advance the treatment and management of cancer. Epic’s mission is to enable the rapid and non-invasive detection of genetic and molecular changes in cancer throughout a patient’s journey. The company was founded on a powerful platform to identify and characterize rare cells, including CTCs. Our technology helps match patients to targeted therapies and monitor for drug resistance, so that the best treatment path can be chosen at every clinical decision point. Today, we partner with leading pharmaceutical companies and major cancer centers around the world. Epic’s goal is to commercialize our technology to increase the success rate of cancer drugs in clinical trials and improve patient outcomes by providing physicians real-time information to guide treatment choices.

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