Affymetrix and ScreenCell Announce Worldwide Distribution Agreement for Circulating Tumor Cell (CTC) Technology
May 17 2012 - 6:30AM
Business Wire
Affymetrix, Inc. (NASDAQ: AFFX) and ScreenCell, a privately-held
company, today announced the signing of a worldwide distribution
agreement for ScreenCell’s isolation devices and dilution buffers,*
designed for the collection of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) in
peripheral blood.
The agreement makes Affymetrix the exclusive distributor of
ScreenCell® products* used in combination with in situ
hybridization (ISH) assays, microarray assays, and other non-PCR
based nucleic acid assays including Affymetrix’ industry-leading
QuantiGene® ViewRNA Assays,* QuantiGene® Plex Assays,* and
GeneChip® Microarray Assays.* The QuantiGene® ViewRNA CTC platform,
consist of ScreenCell’s products and Affymetrix’ QuantiGene ViewRNA
Assays, is now available from Affymetrix.
“This agreement is a powerful combination of two innovative
technologies, one designed to isolate rare cells of potentially
significant prognostic and predictive value in cancer, and another,
our QuantiGene ViewRNA ISH Cell Assays, designed to detect single
RNA transcripts in single CTCs and rare cells with high
specificity,” stated George Bers, Vice President & General
Manager, Expression Business Unit – Panomics for Affymetrix. “Today
we are launching our CTC platform, which combines our highly
sensitive and specific QuantiGene ViewRNA Assay with ScreenCell’s
isolation devices. We believe this platform may potentially have a
dramatic impact on disease detection, enabling researchers in
translational sciences to further examine the impact on treatment,
management and outcome in cancer. We are proud to be ScreenCell’s
global partner and look forward to releasing additional assays and
research applications.”
ScreenCell offers innovative, single-use devices to isolate by
size and characterize a wide variety of tumor cells, both live and
fixed, including mesenchymal cells, cancer stem cells, microembolii
and cancer cells of non-epithelial origin. These cells, which are
considered to be important in metastasis, are often not captured or
cannot be sensitively detected through existing technologies that
only target cells expressing EpCam, a transmembrane glycoprotein on
epithelial cells. With the ScreenCell devices, collected cells are
also well preserved morphologically and can be isolated and grown
in culture for drug screening or further genomics analysis.
“Our goal in designing ScreenCell® technologies was to create a
universal system, not limited to detection of cells of
non-epithelial origin and free of any bias potentially linked to
the use of antibodies for cell capture,” stated David Znaty, Chief
Executive Officer of ScreenCell. “Our goal is to provide a
technology to support further research for use in personalized
medicine by creating a broadly accessible, non-invasive evaluation
of specific, potential therapeutic targets. We are excited to work
with Affymetrix not just for their commercial strength, but because
we believe strongly in our combined technologies.”
* “For Research Use Only. Not for use in diagnostic
procedures.”
PLEASE NOTE: Affymetrix®, the Affymetrix logo, GeneChip®,
and QuantiGene® are registered trademarks of Affymetrix, Inc. All
other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
About ScreenCell
ScreenCell was founded with the objective of designing and
producing a simple but revolutionary technique allowing the
fast and effective filtering of Rare Circulating Cells yielding
high-quality CTC population amenable to better cellular and
molecular characterization.
ScreenCell designed a full range of point of care devices for
development for use in in vitro Diagnostics (IVD) assays and
platforms.
ScreenCell is dedicated to creating technologies allowing CTCs
to become potential end points in future oncology therapeutic
arsenals by filtering out healthy live tumor cells, thus
enabling:
. molecular biology
. cell culture
. enumeration and cytomorphology evaluation
For more information about ScreenCell, please visit
www.screencell.com.
About Affymetrix
Affymetrix technology is used by the world's top pharmaceutical,
diagnostic, and biotechnology companies, as well as leading
academic, government, and nonprofit research institutes. More than
25,000 peer-reviewed papers have been published using the
technology. Affymetrix is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., and
has manufacturing facilities in Santa Clara, Cleveland, Ohio, and
Singapore. The company has about 900 employees worldwide and
maintains sales and distribution operations across Europe, Asia,
and Latin America. For more information about Affymetrix, please
visit www.affymetrix.com.
Forward-looking statements
All statements in this press release that are not historical are
"forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 21E of
the Securities Exchange Act as amended, including statements
regarding Affymetrix' "expectations," "beliefs," "hopes,"
"intentions," "strategies" or the like. Such statements are subject
to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to
differ materially for Affymetrix from those projected. These and
other risk factors are discussed in Affymetrix' Form 10-K for the
year ended December 31, 2011, and other SEC reports for subsequent
quarterly periods.
Affymetrix (NASDAQ:AFFX)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2024 to Oct 2024
Affymetrix (NASDAQ:AFFX)
Historical Stock Chart
From Oct 2023 to Oct 2024