Eurofins Viracor targets precision oncology with the launch of PanCancerIQ

By Doug Irving, Sr. Marketing Manager, Eurofins Viracor BioPharma, DougIrving@eurofins-viracor.com

In the past decade, the field of oncology has witnessed substantial changes, with an increasing focus on precision medicine based on genomic variants. Molecular biomarkers have therefore become fundamental, not only to inform tumour diagnosis and prognosis, but also to drive therapeutic decisions in daily practice, as well as shaping the design of clinical trials for targeted cancer therapy development.

Precision medicine research is realising rapid adoption driven by several factors, including the introduction of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, and advancements in bioinformatics, which have accelerated scientific discovery in genomics. The implementation of precision medicine and genomic profiling technologies is revolutionising the field of precision oncology, as comprehensive genomic analyses become increasingly available in both clinical and research settings.

NGS-based approaches are informing every stage of the drug discovery process, from basic research and target identification through to clinical trials. The new Eurofins Viracor PanCancerIQ™ NGS-based genomic profiling assay service uses the Illumina TruSight Oncology 500™ (TSO) technology to identify genomic aberrations in tumour samples. More specifically, it is a comprehensive genomic profiling service that reports on a panel of 523 genes, supporting identification of all four main classes of alterations known to drive cancer growth: mutations, insertions and deletions (indels), copy number variations (CNV), and gene fusions. It therefore provides a more efficient, cost and tissue saving tumour analysis compared to serial single-biomarker analyses. This type of broader genomic analyses can also look beyond actionable variants in known genes, offering the potential to provide insight on acquired resistance to treatments or to suggest potential synergistic drug combinations.

With the addition of this new service, Eurofins Viracor expands its footprint in oncology clinical trial testing. Combined with Viracor’s broader analytical testing solutions, PanCancerIQ can help accelerate precision oncology studies by screening patients for recruitment in genomically informed trials, unveiling potential new markers of resistance or response to new drugs currently in biopharma pipelines, as well as monitoring tumour molecular evolution upon recurrence or metastasis.

The new PanCancerIQ panel is also planned to be offered for liquid biopsies (cfDNA) in late 2021, expanding Eurofins Viracor’s oncology portfolio for biopharma clients by enabling studies where tissue biopsies might not be an option. For more information, visit: www.Viracor-Eurofins.com