RBM and Covance sign biomarker alliance and services agreement

Rules-Based Medicine, Inc. (RBM) today announced it has entered into a biomarker alliance and services agreement with Covance Inc. (NYSE: CVD) that will provide biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies with a powerful combination of biomarker technologies and services for use in drug development. Under terms of the agreement, Covance will use RBM as its exclusive third-party provider of multiplexed protein biomarker testing services, and RBM shall use Covance as its exclusive referral source for laboratory testing services. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Drug development organizations are increasingly utilizing biomarker technologies to stratify patient populations and quantify drug candidate safety and efficacy with the aim of improving clinical trial success rates. These biomarker studies are necessary for effective prioritization of drug development resources.

"Biomarkers can be critical in the effort to bring new medicines to market," said Craig Benson, RBM president and chief executive officer. "We believe this alliance can provide RBM with greater access to drug developers seeking to implement biomarker strategies in order to improve the effectiveness of their clinical trials. We are pleased to link our efforts to those of Covance, a world-class drug development services company."

"RBM's quantitative platform, combining biomarker discovery, validation, and sample processing, is optimized to support clinical trials," said Deborah Tanner, corporate senior vice president and president of Covance Central Laboratory Services. "This innovative technology from RBM, along with Covance's other biomarker capabilities, are critical tools for drug safety and efficacy testing that can help our clients make better decisions earlier in drug development and accelerate their drug development programs."

RBM's Multi-Analyte Profile (MAP) test panels measure from a few to several hundred protein biomarkers involved in numerous biochemical pathways from a single drop of fluid. MAPs provide a comprehensive, reliable and cost-effective means of measuring protein expression patterns. A typical customer will follow the "RBM Approach" and use a large immunoassay MAP, such as DiscoveryMAP(TM), in early clinical research. As the project matures, the customer will select stratification, safety and efficacy biomarkers to create a targeted panel, or CustomMAP, that is suitable for use in late-stage clinical trials.