Clarient, Inc. (Nasdaq: CLRT), a premier technology and services resource for pathologists, oncologists and the pharmaceutical industry, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office and the European Patent Office have allowed patents covering the technology behind Clarient Insight® Dx Mammostrat®, a test designed to aid in the classification of the risk of recurrence of breast cancer following surgery and initial treatment.
More than 210,000 women in the U.S. develop breast cancer each year. Mammostrat development was targeted to breast tumors which express estrogen receptor, the most commonly seen subtype of breast cancer. The standard of care for most of these patients is surgery to remove the tumor, followed by anti-hormonal therapy (e.g. tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors). Mammostrat testing will help pathologists, oncologists and patients decide whether additional aggressive chemotherapy should be added to a patient's treatment regimen.
Ron Andrews, Clarient Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, "Gaining allowance of these important patents represents another milestone for Clarient. Our strategy of using our proprietary cancer biomarkers and correlating them to clinical outcomes is paying off as we continue to develop novel diagnostic and prognostic tests. These patents, as well as our UK and U.S. patents for TLE3 announced earlier this summer, differ from standard gene patents as they are linked to specific clinical utility."