Biocept Enters Clinical Collaboration with Sarah Cannon Research Institute Focused on Screening ER+ Breast Cancer Patients

Biocept, Inc.

, a molecular diagnostics company commercializing and developing liquid biopsies to improve the detection and treatment of cancer, today announced that it has entered into a clinical collaboration with Sarah Cannon Research Institute (SCRI), the research arm of Sarah Cannon, the global cancer enterprise of Hospital Corporation of America. The collaboration seeks to determine the clinical utility of detecting biomarkers present in circulating tumor cell (CTC) and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in blood samples for estrogen positive (ER+) breast cancer patients using Biocept's OncoCEE™ technology. "The goal of our collaboration with Sarah Cannon is to identify biomarkers that can be evaluated through a simple blood draw, without continually performing tissue biopsies on a patient," said Biocept Senior Vice President and Senior Medical Director Veena Singh, MD. "By using a blood sample to screen these patients, we seek to help more patients qualify for new drug therapies that can more effectively target cancer." Biocept offers a highly sensitive and quantitative blood-based method for the detection and monitoring of biomarkers, which can lead to physicians making better informed treatment decisions based on genomic information. "Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer in women, and more than two-thirds of cases express estrogen receptor (ER). It is encouraging to see targeted therapies for patients with ER+ disease, which include recently approved drugs as well as newer options currently available in clinical trials," said Erika P. Hamilton, MD, Associate Director, Breast Cancer and Gynecologic Cancer Research Program at SCRI. "Understanding a patient's ER status at the time of diagnosis or recurrence, and then monitoring throughout the patient's treatment, is becoming increasingly more important." The collaboration is designed to demonstrate the utility of Biocept's liquid biopsy diagnostics to detect biomarker status in cancer patients, and for the assessment of tumor treatment response over time.