NEW YORK – Quest Diagnostics said Monday that its subsidiary Haystack Oncology has entered a research collaboration with the University of Montreal focused on metastatic colorectal cancer patients whose tumors have spread to the liver.
The partners plan to conduct a prospective observational study dubbed Early Detection of Treatment Failure in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer Patients, or eDetect. University of Montreal researchers will use Haystack's circulating tumor DNA-based minimal residual disease test, Haystack MRD, on colorectal cancer patients after systemic treatment and liver surgery.
Investigators at the University of Montreal's hospital research center, CRCHUM, aim to determine whether Haystack MRD can help detect early signs of disease relapse in these patients and to evaluate their response to treatment. Haystack, which was acquired by Quest in 2023, claims its error-corrected MRD test can detect down to one ctDNA molecule in a million non-cancer DNA molecules.
"By teaming up with Haystack, we will be able to understand the best use of the MRD technology to inform treatment decisions," Simon Turcotte, a scientist and surgeon at CRCHUM who is leading the eDetect study, said in a statement. "This will guide the design of future interventional trials to assess impact on patient survival."