Cancer biobank Indivumed and CRO Helomics team up on precision medicine

Print 22 September 2017
Angus Liu / Fierce Pharma

Indivumed, which has a large cancer biobank, has partnered with cancer research specialist Helomics to analyze human cancer biospecimens and relevant clinical data collected from patients around the world to help advance research in personalized cancer treatments.

Indivumed has formed a large biobank of all major malignant tumor types through collecting and processing solid tumor samples from consenting patients within its clinical network or from other preferred providers. Its clinical network includes hospitals and clinics in Germany, Poland, the U.S. and India.

With short ischemia times and stringent sample preparation procedure, Indivumed says on its website that its samples “retain patterns of biomolecules such as RNA, DNA and protein as closely comparable to their state when in the human body as possible.”

Apart from the biospecimens, Indivumed also documents patients’ clinical data from their medical records and interviews with both the patients themselves and physicians to help detect trends and potential causes of cancer.

The Germany-based company has biospecimens from over 30,000 patients and is adding more from 10,000 new international patients each year, the company says on its website.

With its unique cancer capabilities, Indivumed can also act as support to preclinical and clinical cancer researchers, offering such services as preclinical drug profiling, gene expression analysis, and biomarker assay development and clinical validation. The rest is where Helomics comes in.

“Helomics brings a special blend of research analytics expertise, CLIA service capabilities and proprietary research platforms that will complement our existing research infrastructure,” Hartmut Juhl, M.D., founder and CEO of Indivumed, said in a statement.

A Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based CRO, Helomis also focuses on cancer precision medicine. It has its own biobank and also offers several protein expression and genetic mutation tests associated with drug response and disease prognosis. Its biomarker analysis panels are readily available for gynecologic, lung, colon, pancreatic and breast cancers, but can also be performed on any solid tumor type.

The collaboration between the two, financial details of which were not disclosed, will allow for “the most advanced development of cancer biomarkers, driving the next generation of precision medicine for cancer,” Juhl said.

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