Sequenom signs clinical collaboration with University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf

Sequenom, Inc. (NASDAQ: SQNM), a life sciences company committed to enabling healthier lives through the development of innovative products and services, today announced that it has entered into a clinical collaboration with University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) in Germany. UKE and Sequenom will collaborate to profile circulating cell-free tumor DNA in blood to monitor response to treatment in later stage colorectal cancer patients. This technology has the potential to overcome the challenges and limitations associated with current methods such as imaging, colonoscopy, and invasive biopsies.

"At UKE, we have been studying tumor-related nucleic acids and cells in blood for many years and are engaged in a number of clinical studies," said Klaus Pantel, MD, Chairman in the Department of Tumor Biology, Center of Experimental Medicine at University Medical Center Hamburg Eppendorf. "The collaboration with Sequenom will allow us to qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate somatic mutations in the blood of colorectal cancer patients, and monitor response to treatment in a non-invasive manner."

"This is Sequenom's first oncology collaboration with a leading cancer center in Europe," said Daniel Grosu, M.D., Chief Medical Officer at Sequenom. "We look forward to working with UKE to better understand the dynamic changes in circulating tumor DNA that accompany the use of various treatments in later-stage colorectal cancer, and the concordance between tumor tissue and plasma across a broad spectrum of genomic alterations."

Sequenom is currently developing a Research Use Only (RUO) assay with an initial focus on the detection and molecular profiling of late stage non-hematologic malignancies in settings where tissue biopsies are not available or are too risky to obtain. The assay will cover a breadth of cancer types by analyzing over 100 cancer-related genes that are included in professional society guidelines, linked to targeted therapies currently in clinical trials, or part of well-documented cancer pathways.