LabCorp, Epic Expand Tech for Asian Oncology Trials

Epic Sciences announced an agreement with LabCorp to provide circulating tumor cell (CTC) technology and support oncology clinical trials in Asia through Covance Drug Development. Covance will process patient samples in Singapore, and then send samples to Epic's clinical laboratory in San Diego. This agreement expands on a previous contract announced last year between Epic and LabCorp for European clinical trials. 

Epic's blood sample-based CTC technology can incorporate CTC enumeration, quantitative protein biomarker analysis and single-cell genomic analysis by next generation sequencing (NGS) or fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) to give a comprehensive picture of a patient's cancer. Its lab in San Diego was recently licensed under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) of 1988, for downstream detection and molecular characterization of CTCs.