ArcherDX announces strategic partnership with Chinese firm HeliTec for NGS-based diagnostic development
BOULDER, Colo. and SHENZHEN, China, April 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ArcherDX, the leader in NGS-based oncology sequencing applications, and the precision medicine company HeliTec announced today a strategic partnership to advance NGS-based cancer diagnostic development in China. The partnership will entail co-developing and cross-licensing NGS-based technologies with the goal of registering oncology diagnostic kits with the Chinese Food and Drug Administration (CFDA).
Founded in 2016 in Shenzhen, China, HeliTec focuses on improving cancer patient outcomes with innovative, sequencing-based diagnostics. Co-founder and Chief Scientist Zongli Zheng, Ph.D., has made several key contributions to NGS while at Karolinska Institutet and Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Zheng is also an inventor of the patented Anchored Multiplex PCR (AMP™) enrichment chemistry, which is exclusively licensed to ArcherDX and is central to Archer® NGS assays.
Last month, HeliTec announced the PANO-Seq™ project to reveal molecular traces of early tumors that are destined to be malignant. The project will use liquid biopsy-based NGS assays to investigate up to 60,000 archived high-risk population samples in one of the largest cohort studies of liquid biopsies ever performed. As part of this study, HeliTec is evaluating the Archer Reveal ctDNA™ 28 assay to identify oncogenic mutations from these liquid biopsies.
"We are pleased to work with Archer to co-develop cutting-edge, NGS-based diagnostic assays in China, particularly on those cancer types predominant in Asian populations," said Dongbin Zhou, CEO at HeliTec. "AMP technology has been widely adopted for a number of cancer sequencing applications, and this collaboration will bring a complete pipeline of AMP-based assays to the Chinese clinical market."
Dr. Jason Myers, CEO of ArcherDX, elaborated, "The HeliTec team has a strong history of NGS assay development, and the scale and scope of the projects they are initiating are very ambitious. We are excited to partner with HeliTec, furthering our mutual goal of improving cancer diagnosis and treatment globally."
All Archer NGS assays, including FusionPlex® RNA assays, VariantPlex® DNA assays, the Reveal ctDNA 28 kit, and the Immunoverse™ T-cell receptor kit, are immediately available from HeliTec.
About HeliTec
HeliTec is developing NGS-based technologies that enable precision diagnostics used in early cancer screening and treatment determination. The company founders and leadership are experts in cancer genetic testing and precision medicine that were drawn from both academic centers of excellence and the pharmaceutical industry. HeliTec is headquartered in Shenzhen, China.
Learn more about HeliTec at htgene.com.
About ArcherDX
ArcherDX addresses the bottlenecks associated with using NGS in oncogenic mutation detection by offering a robust platform for targeted sequencing. By combining proprietary AMP™ chemistry with easy-to-use, lyophilized reagents, Archer NGS assays generate highly enriched sequencing libraries to detect gene fusions, point mutations, CNVs and RNA abundance from solid tumors, blood cancers, sarcomas and liquid biopsies. Complemented by powerful bioinformatics software, ArcherDX technology dramatically enhances complex mutation identification and discovery. ArcherDX is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado.
Learn more about Archer NGS assays at archerdx.com.
Trademarks
HeliTec™, PANO-Seq™ are trademarks of HeliTec, Inc. Archer®, FusionPlex®, VariantPlex®, Reveal ctDNA™, Immunoverse™ and AMP™ are trademarks of ArcherDX, Inc.
SOURCE ArcherDX
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