NEW YORK – Saga Diagnostics said on Thursday that it has expanded its ongoing research collaboration with the University College London Cancer Institute.
The company and university began collaborating last June. As part of the new agreement, the Sweden-based firm will continue to use its SagaSafe assay (formerly IBSafe) to detect EGFR and other gene mutations, as well as perform analyses on several hundred clinical tissue samples from the Cancer Research UK-funded, UCL-sponsored TRACERx and PEACE studies.
The firm said its SagaSafe test, which is based on digital PCR and its own proprietary chemistry, has a lower limit of detection of 0.001 percent. Users can apply the assay to quantify mutations in tissue samples and ctDNA in liquid biopsy samples, such as plasma, with "unprecedented performance."
Saga expects to continue running analyses on the blood and tissue samples at its central lab in Lund.
Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
Last July, Saga signed an agreement with Germany-based SensID to codevelop control reagents for cancer mutation detection.