Exact Sciences Corp. a leading provider of cancer screening and diagnostic tests. and OncXerna Therapeutics, Inc., a precision medicine company, announced they have entered an exclusive license agreement to bring OncXerna's Xerna TME Panel lab services to more US patients.

 

The Xerna TME (tumour microenvironment) Panel is an innovative gene expression score that helps identify patients likely to respond to anti-angiogenic and immunotherapies. The agreement allows Exact Sciences to provide more critical answers to cancer patients and physicians facing difficult therapy selection decisions while supporting biopharma partners in patient selection for their therapeutic programmes.

 

"As the role of immunotherapy in cancer treatment grows, a critical unmet need among oncologists and healthcare professionals is being able to predict a patient's response to specific drugs prior to starting treatment," said Matt Franklin, general manager of Precision Oncology for Exact Sciences. "The immunotherapy prediction ability of OncXerna's Xerna TME Panel, coupled with the comprehensive profiling capabilities of Exact Sciences' GEM ExTra test, has the potential to significantly impact patient outcomes."

 

The Xerna TME Panel uses proprietary RNA-based gene expression data and a machine learning-based algorithm to classify patients based on the interplay between angiogenic and immunogenic dominant biologies of the TME. Early clinical evidence suggests that it may be the first RNA TME signature to predict immunotherapy benefit.1 Exact Sciences plans to offer the Xerna TME Panel as part of its GEM ExTra test, further enhancing its sequencing offerings. GEM ExTra includes a comprehensive whole exome genomic profile and deep transcriptome analysis to identify actionable alterations associated with targeted therapy benefit or resistance. The Xerna TME Panel will provide additional insights into the benefit of immunotherapy alone or in combination with other therapies from the same patient sample.

 

Laura Benjamin, CEO of OncXerna Therapeutics, commented, "With this licensing agreement, Exact Sciences can now expand their GEM ExTra offering beyond genomic and transcriptomic-profiling options and provide customers with an expression signature to analyze biologies that are relevant for emerging therapeutics from across the industry. OncXerna continues to use the Xerna TME Panel to support its two internal clinical programs and is pleased to make it available more broadly to accelerate additional advances in precision oncology."

 

In the future, Exact Sciences expects to provide clinicians broad access to the Xerna TME Panel through its existing Precision Oncology team and to biopharma partners as a companion diagnostic.

 

The Xerna TME Panel uses proprietary RNA-based gene expression data and a machine learning-based algorithm to classify patients based on the interplay between angiogenic and immunogenic dominant biologies of the tumour microenvironment (TME). The Xerna TME Panel is an investigational assay and has not been approved by the FDA.

 

Exact Sciences' therapy selection program includes two comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) tests to help physicians identify the genomic mutations driving advanced cancers, leading patients to better care through targeted cancer treatments. The GEM ExTra test detects damage in tumour genes and provides a complete biological picture of certain refractory, rare, or aggressive cancers. With an extensive panel of approximately 20,000 genes and 169 introns, the GEM ExTra test is one of the most comprehensive genomic (DNA) and transcriptomic (RNA) panels available today. The GEM ExTra test provides physicians, academic medical centres, and biopharma researchers with vital interpreted information to understand changes to a patient's tumour genomic profile and recommend therapeutic treatment plans. For patients with advanced and metastatic cancer, the company offers the Oncotype MAP test, a rapid, comprehensive tumour profiling panel, which delivers results in three to five business days3 and allows physicians to understand a patient's tumour profile and recommend actionable targeted therapies or clinical trials.

 

OncXerna Therapeutics is a clinical stage oncology company developing novel monoclonal antibodies to treat solid tumours.

 

A leading provider of cancer screening and diagnostic tests, Exact Sciences relentlessly pursues smarter solutions providing the clarity to take life-changing action, earlier.