Epic Sciences Inc., a diagnostic company focused on the analysis of circulating tumor cells in the blood, announced that it’s collaborating with the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania on multiple studies to help improve personalized therapies for cancer treatment.
“Successful treatment of cancer depends on understanding the heterogeneity of the patient’s tumor burden and the driving genetic alterations behind disease progression,” said Murali Prahalad, president and CEO of Epic Sciences. “Research conducted at the Abramson Cancer Center will enable faster development of novel personalized treatments that are able to address this heterogeneity.”
The research teams at the Abramson Cancer Center, a leader in the liquid biopsy field for cancer detection, will use Epic Sciences’ circulating tumor cell (CTC) detection and analysis platform to explore the heterogeneity of a diversity of cancer types, with a focus on genomic and phenotypic markers that help to better understand the utility of existing therapies and potential new drugs.
“Cancer is a complex, heterogeneous disease in which both genotype and phenotype change throughout progression,” said Erica Carpenter, director of the Circulating Tumor Material Laboratory and research assistant professor in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at Penn. “We therefore need to utilize the most innovative technologies that allow us to study disease resistance.”
