By Diagnostics World News Staff
April 13, 2018 Bristol-Myers Squibb and Illumina today announced a collaboration that will use Illumina's next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology to develop and globally commercialize in vitro diagnostic (IVD) assays in support of Bristol-Myers Squibb's oncology portfolio. The companies plan to develop a diagnostic version of the Illumina TruSight Oncology 500 assay to measure potentially predictive genomic biomarkers, including Tumor Mutation Burden (TMB). Illumina's TruSight Oncology 500 assay is being developed to detect most of the known biomarkers for oncology therapeutics, including TMB and Microsatellite Instability for immunotherapies.
"Through our deep understanding of cancer biology and emerging research, we recognize the importance for physicians to know each patient's biomarker status to help fight their cancer in a more personalized way," said Saurabh Saha, M.D., Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Global Head of Translational Medicine, Bristol-Myers Squibb in a press release. "We are excited to partner with Illumina to pursue development of diagnostics that can help predict which patients will have the potential to benefit most from our immunotherapies."
"The identification of biomarkers for targeted therapies is emerging as a key part of a cancer patient's journey, from treatment selection through response monitoring and allows physicians to follow the evolution of a patient's tumor over time," said Garret Hampton, Ph.D., Executive Vice President of Clinical Genomics at Illumina in the same press release. "Next-generation sequencing assays, such as a companion diagnostic (CDx) version of TruSight Oncology 500, are ideally suited to the comprehensive interrogation of a patient's cancer. With BMS' leading position in immunotherapy development, we see tremendous promise in this partnership to co-develop next-generation sequencing-based diagnostics that can identify effective therapeutic combinations and provide global access to these targeted drugs."
Cancer immunotherapy works by helping the immune system mount an anti-cancer response, a process that depends in part on the recognition of cancer-specific proteins called neoantigens. Bristol-Myers Squibb's clinical development program includes 24 clinical-stage molecules designed to target different immune system pathways across more than 50 types of cancers, and through its translational capabilities, has identified a number of potentially predictive biomarkers, including PD-L1, TMB, MSI-H/dMMR and LAG-3.