Trovagene Inc, has entered into a strategic partnership designed to assess the utility of the company’s urine-based cell-free oncogene mutation monitoring technology in clinical practice.

The partnership establishes a translational research program to be conducted by the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University (Lurie Cancer Center) and the Northwestern Medicine Developmental Therapeutics Institute (NMDTI). The Lurie Cancer Center and NMDTI will work with Trovagene on clinical protocols that incorporate oncogene mutation monitoring during the course of cancer treatment, and will assess its overall impact on disease management and patient outcomes.

Platanias

Leonidas C. Platanias, MD, PhD

“The Lurie Cancer Center is focused on advancing personalized medicine through collaborations with leading developers of state-of-the-art genomic technologies, such as Trovagene, to facilitate clinical decision-making and improve patient care,” said Leonidas C. Platanias, MD, PhD, interim director of the center.

The Lurie Cancer Center and NMDTI have launched a discipline-defining research program devoted to uniting and expanding their investment in the field of developmental therapeutics. This field creates a continuous synergistic loop linking preclinical basic science breakthroughs to the use of novel approaches to prevent cancer, to better predict its causes and behavior, and to develop better treatments for patients who suffer from cancer. The center is an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center and a founding member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), an alliance of 25 of the world’s leading cancer centers dedicated to improving the quality and effectiveness of care provided to patients with cancer.

Headquartered in San Diego, Trovagene is leveraging its proprietary technology for the detection and monitoring of cell-free DNA and RNA in urine. The company’s technology detects and quantitates oncogene mutations in cancer patients for improved disease management. Trovagene’s precision cancer monitoring platform is designed to provide important clinical information beyond the current standard of care, and is protected by significant intellectual property, including multiple issued patents and pending patent applications globally.

Giles

Francis J. Giles, MD

“We are excited about the increasing opportunities to tailor cancer treatment to the specific genetic abnormalities that drive disease, and as leading institutes focused on translational research, we are dedicated to the rapid integration of technologies that will make patient-specific therapy an affordable reality,” said Francis J. Giles, MD, associate director for translational medicine and developmental therapeutics at the Lurie Cancer Center and director of the NMDTI.

NMDTI provides the infrastructure, expertise, and people to accelerate the process of discovering developmental therapeutics. With dedicated patient care facilities, experienced physician scientists, and specialized advanced practice providers, pharmacists, and allied staff, NMDTI brings a large external pipeline of investigational agents to patients while accelerating the development of Northwestern University’s internal pipeline of novel therapies.

Trovagene is engaged in clinical collaborations with leading academic institutions and integrated healthcare networks to demonstrate the clinical utility of its precision cancer-monitoring platform for the detection of oncogene mutations, and the assessment of tumor dynamics and treatment response over time. The company is focused on expanding clinical evidence to support broad market adoption of its molecular diagnostic platform, and to generate the health economic data necessary to establish favorable reimbursement.

Schuh

Antonius Schuh, PhD

“We look forward to working with the Lurie Cancer Center and NMDTI as Trovagene continues to expand the number of top healthcare institutions evaluating our precision cancer-monitoring technology for implementation into the clinic,” said Antonius Schuh, PhD, CEO of Trovagene. “Their world-class translational research organizations have a strong track record for bringing cutting-edge healthcare technologies to patients, and we are pleased that they are now among our clinical collaborators.”

For further information, visit Trovagene.