NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – OmniSeq said today that Hitachi High-Technologies has taken an option to exclusively license its OmniSeq Comprehensive and Immune Report Card tests for clinical distribution in Japan after participating in the company's Series B funding round.
OmniSeq — a subsidiary of the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center — said it plans to use the funds from the Series B to conduct ongoing retrospective and prospective clinical trials and to generate evidence of the clinical utility of its comprehensive genomic and immune profiling services.
Under the terms of its new agreement with Hitachi, OmniSeq will collaborate with the company on the development of its clinical laboratory operations in Japan. Financial details were not disclosed.
Toshiyuki Ikeda, senior vice president and executive officer of Hitachi High-Tech said in a statement that there is growing demand in Japan for access to personalized cancer therapy, and especially to new immune-oncology options.
LabCorp and Roswell Park also participated in the financing round. LabCorp signed an exclusive licensing agreement last year for distribution of the OmniSeq Comprehensive and Immune Report Card assays to US physicians through Integrated Oncology and to global biopharmaceutical customers through Covance Drug Development.
OmniSeq's Immune Report Card is a comprehensive immune profiling test designed to help oncologists make decisions about treatment with checkpoint inhibitors. The test offers a single analysis of a variety of common biomarkers used in this area, including PD-L1, microsatellite instability, tumor mutational burden, and additional gene expression patterns with relevance to immunotherapy response.
The company's OmniSeq Comprehensive is a 144-gene, pan-cancer, next-generation sequencing panel used to guide overall cancer treatment decisions.