ROCKVILLE, Md., April 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Theranostics Health announced that it has received an exclusive license from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to commercialize microdissection including Laser Capture Microdissection (LCM) combined with protein analysis for cancer diagnostics and companion diagnostics. Under the terms of the agreement, Theranostics Health will pay NIH the customary license issue royalties, minimum annual royalties, benchmark and earned royalties upon successful commercialization of the technology.
Theranostics was founded on the vision of shaping a new paradigm in disease management with two primary and complementary goals; arming physicians with accurate diagnostic tests so that they can tailor treatment based on the individual patient’s aberrant signaling profile and enabling drug developers to better stratify clinical cohorts in clinical trials to efficiently develop safer and more effective drugs.
Dr. Lance Liotta, co-inventor of the technology, co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of the Company said, “Existing methods of genomic and proteomic tissue profiling analysis that do not rely on LCM have been shown to produce inaccurate and possibly misleading results, arising from heterogeneity of tissues and variation in cellular compositions between samples and within different regions of a tissue sample. This licensed technology allows us to precisely collect and analyze the specific cells of interest from patient samples.” “But this is only the first step,” according to Dr. Emanuel F. Petricoin, co-inventor of the technology, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of the Company, “our unique signaling pathway profiling platform allows the activity of theranostic biomarkers of interest to be quantitatively measured from microdissected patient samples. With this technology and our experience and expertise in disease signaling pathways, we are discovering new ways of more effectively treating patients with existing drugs and treating patients who are resistant to their current therapies.”
“This exclusive license allows Theranostics Health to commercially develop companion diagnostics for treatment decision and monitoring, providing direct benefit to patients as well as building significant value for our shareholders,” added the Company’s President and CEO, Dr. Danong Chen.
About Theranostics Health
Theranostics Health is a privately held company founded in 2006. Its core technology is the breakthrough Reverse Phase Protein Microarray (RPMA) combined with Laser Capture Microdissection (LCM). The technology measures the activity of a large number of biomarkers, enabling pharmaceutical companies to accurately profile their drug candidates to facilitate efficient and effective drug development. More importantly, it enables physicians to tailor optimized therapies to their patients based on the biomarker profile of each individual patient, providing safer and more effective therapies. The technology, invented by the company’s co-founders Drs. Emanuel Petricoin and Lance Liotta, was first published by them in 2001, has been featured in over 50 peer-reviewed publications and 20 scientific presentations within the past 2 years, and was successfully used in NCI-sponsored clinical trials. Currently, Theranostics Health is working with 5 of the top 10 global pharmaceutical companies in their drug R&D efforts. The company closed its seed financing of $5 million in 2007 and generated revenue in its first year of operations. For more information please email info@theranosticshealth.com or visit http://www.theranosticshealth.com.
CONTACT: Athanasia Anagnostou of Theranostics Health, +1-703-302-0262,
sia@theranosticshealth.com
Web site: http://www.theranosticshealth.com/
