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Exosome Diagnostics and DxS Collaborate to Develop Blood Based Tests for Key Cancer Mutations

23 Jun 2009 - Exosome Diagnostics, Inc. and DxS Ltd. announced that they will collaborate on the development of blood based companion diagnostics for key cancer gene mutations, such as KRAS, BRAF and EGFR. The collaboration will use DxS’ Scorpions® real-time PCR Mutation Test Kits in conjunction with ExosomeDX’s xOSÔ technology which harvests high-quality nucleic acids from blood exosomes.
 
The collaboration will initially focus on developing blood-based measurement of KRAS, BRAF, EGFR and other key mutations for predicting patient response to targeted therapies. Blood based mutation measurement is particularly valuable in circumstances where tissue bioavailability is limited such as in lung, pancreatic and ovarian cancers.
 
Exosomes are small microvesicles precipitously shed by all solid tumors into blood. They contain virtually the entire cancer tumor transcriptome. In studies, ExosomeDX has identified over 21,000 mRNA and 1,100 miRNA in circulating tumor derived exosomes, all protected in the exosome lipid bi-layer from any blood-based RNase. Initial findings were published in the December 2008 issue of Nature Cell Biology.