2015年3月11日 讯/生物谷BIOON/ --癌症的诊断的目的一直以来被定义为给患者提供“个性化”和“精准”的医疗服务。但鉴于企业努力追求一种基于基因组数据就能给予最好的个体治疗方案的无所不包的测试，当下的流行词语似乎更倾向于“全面”。
Illumina和默克的生物药公司-默克雪兰诺已经达成合作开发一项全面的新一代肿瘤测序技术，但该协议的财务细节尚未公开。这个协议与去年8月Illumina与阿斯利康，强生旗下Janssen Biotech与赛诺菲的协议类似，但却是独立的。同年9月，赛默飞宣布了与葛兰素史克和辉瑞共同开发基于实体肿瘤的全面癌症基因诊断技术。
默克雪兰诺公司全球业务发展部主管谈到："我们与Illumima围绕下一代测序技术的合作将使我们建立多年前从未听过的基因组研究，并且将推动多种诊断技术的发展。"
这种新的合作方式将有助于开发和商业化多种支持临床诊断的检测防范。Illumina已经于去年9月成立的组织Actionable Genome Consortium一起工作，并提出了开发下一代对肿瘤基因测序技术的标准。除了Illumina公司，Dana-Farber癌症研究所，Fred Hutchinson癌症研究中心，MD Anderson癌症中心，斯隆凯特琳纪念癌症中心都是Actionable Genome Consortium的创始成员。
Illumina公司的营销总监Richard Klausner博士在一份声明中说到：“这项协议是另一个迈向实现精密医学的承诺”。美国总统奥巴马近日宣布的美国政府的精密医学倡议中，专门列出了把扩大遗传有关的临床试验作为一个对肿瘤进行更好治疗的关键方法。
信源：FierceMedicalDevices
Merck Serono, Illumina partner in the latest universal, next-gen, cancer diagnostic deal
Cancer diagnostics has long been defined by the aim of providing "personalized" and "precision" medicine to patients. But now the buzzword of the moment seems to be trending more toward "universal"--as the industry strives for an all-encompassing test that will mete out the best possible individual treatment protocols based on genomic data.
Illumina ($ILMN) and Merck Serono, the biopharma business of Merck KGaA, have partnered to develop a universal, next-generation sequencing oncology diagnostics deal. the financial details of the deal remain undisclosed.
This deal is separate from a similar deal that Illumina made last August with AstraZeneca ($AZN), Johnson & Johnson ($JNJ) company Janssen Biotech and Sanofi ($SNY). Also in September, Thermo Fisher ($TMO) went on to announce a comparable universal cancer genomic diagnostic deal with biopharma partners GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK) and Pfizer ($PFE) that's focused specifically on solid tumors.
"Our collaboration with Illumina around next-generation sequencing will enable us to perform genome studies at a pace unheard of a few years ago, and could lead to the development of several diagnostics," Susan Herbert, Head of Global Business Development at Merck Serono, said in a statement.
The newly partnered pair is slated to develop and commercialize assays to detect and measure multiple variants that are relevant to supporting clinical testing. Illumina is already working with the Actionable Genome Consortium--a group founded last September to recommend standards for applying next-gen sequencing to cancer tumors.
Along with Illumina, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the MD Anderson Cancer Center, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center are all founding members of the Actionable Genome Consortium.
"This agreement is another step forward in realizing the promise of precision medicine," Illumina CMO Dr. Richard Klausner said in a statement. "The U.S. government's Precision Medicine Initiative, recently announced by President Obama, specifically outlines the need to expand genetically-based clinical trials as a key approach for developing better treatments for cancer."