Clearbridge BioMedics joins CANCER-ID consortium as first Asian partner

SINGAPORE, Oct. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Clearbridge BioMedics today announced that it has joined CANCER-ID, a public-private international consortium that aims to establish standard protocols for, and clinical validation of, blood-based biomarkers. Founded in 2015 and backed by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), CANCER-ID currently has 38 partners from 14 countries, including Clearbridge Biomedics. The company is the consortium's first partner headquartered in Asia.

The CANCER-ID consortium brings together experts from academic medical centres and industry engaged in oncology research and patient care, who are working to advance cancer treatment and therapy monitoring by using circulating tumour cells (CTCs) and tumour-related DNA (ctDNA) found in blood. CANCER-ID supports a number of innovative research projects, which aim to develop clinical utility in cancer treatment and monitoring through the identification of biomarkers in blood, specifically for lung and breast cancer.  

Clearbridge BioMedics has developed the proprietary ClearCell^® FX System, which is a label-free, enrichment and isolation platform that retrieves intact, viable CTCs from a patient's blood sample. The technology enables seamless processing of both CTCs and ctDNA from the same patient blood sample for subsequent analysis. It is currently being used in cancer research and clinical trials to better understand the underlying biology of cancer, to gain new insights into the disease and improve patient management. The ClearCell^® FX System is also being used at several academic consortium partners and hospitals for research projects under CANCER-ID.

"We believe that the use of liquid biopsy will play a critical role in advancing cancer diagnostics and personalised medicine. By participating in the CANCER-ID consortium, we aim to accelerate the adoption of CTC-based diagnostics in the clinic. This will ultimately lead to better patient management and improved outcomes for cancer patients," said Dr Michael Paumen, CEO Clearbridge BioMedics. 

"The innovative label-free ClearCell FX microfluidic technology is an important addition to the CANCER-ID repertoire of EpCam independent CTC capture assays, which enables the detection and characterization of subsets of tumor cells that undergo an epithelial mesenchymal transition," said Prof. Dr. Klaus Pantel, Scientific Coordinator of CANCER-ID and Chairman of the Department of Tumor Biology at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf

Clearbridge BioMedics will show-case its liquid biopsy platform at two upcoming conferences, the ACTC meeting in October (www.actc2017.org) and AMP in November 2017 (www.amp.org).

About Clearbridge BioMedics

Clearbridge BioMedics is a clinical oncology company that enables non-invasive liquid biopsy using a label-free Circulating Tumour Cell (CTC ) enrichment platform. It is a National University of Singapore (NUS) spin-off company committed to revolutionizing cancer diagnostics and patient care. The ClearCell® FX System, using the CTChip^®, is based on innovative technology that effectively isolates intact and viable CTCs from patients' blood. The system uses inertial focusing microfluidics for label-free CTC enrichment, capturing heterogeneous and dynamic cancer cells to be used for cancer diagnosis and treatment monitoring. By enriching CTCs from standard blood samples, the platform allows for analysis of disease before, during, and after treatment, which has become increasingly critical in the new era of precision medicine.

Headquartered in Singapore, Clearbridge BioMedics currently has customers spanning Asia, Europe and North America. The company has won numerous awards and garnered global recognition for the ClearCell® FX System. Clearbridge BioMedics has received ISO 13485 certification in 2011, and the ClearCell® FX attained CE IVD in 2015. http://www.clearbridgebiomedics.com/

About the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI)         

The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) is working to improve health by speeding up the development of, and patient access to, innovative medicines, particularly in areas where there is an unmet medical or social need. It does this by facilitating collaboration between the key players involved in healthcare research, including universities, the pharmaceutical and other industries, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), patient organizations and medicines regulators.

IMI is a partnership between the European Union and the European pharmaceutical industry, represented by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA). Through the IMI 2 programme, IMI has a budget of €3.3 billion for the period 2014-2024. Half of this comes from the EU's research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020. The other half comes from large companies, mostly from the pharmaceutical sector; these do not receive any EU funding, but contribute to the projects 'in kind', for example by donating their researchers' time or providing access to research facilities or resources.

The research leading to these results has received support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement n° [115749], resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies' in-kind contribution. www.imi.europa.eu

The text in this press release reflects Clearbridge BioMedics' views and neither IMI nor the European Union, EFPIA or any Associated Partners are responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained herein.

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