Biocept Announces Collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine to Develop Liquid Biopsy Tests for Estrogen Receptor Gene
Clinical studies have shown that endocrine therapy treatment can significantly reduce breast cancer-related mortality for patients with estrogen receptor (ER) positive breast cancers. However, nearly one-third of women treated with Tamoxifen and other endocrine therapies become resistant to these therapies. Recent studies utilizing next-generation sequencing on estrogen receptor-positive, metastatic patient samples indicate that recurrent ESR1 mutations, which may play an important role in acquired endocrine therapy resistance, are far more frequent than previously thought. As a results, ESR1 mutations are becoming important biomarker targets as an indicator for therapy resistance and could serve as a companion diagnostic to cancer therapeutics currently in development that address this acquired form of resistance.
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Surgical tumor biopsies are typically used to evaluate the presence of ESR1 mutations. However, these invasive surgical procedures are not always practical for monitoring as they can add risk and are sometimes not possible due to the patient's health. Additionally, tissue biopsy may not be sufficient to detect these mutations due to tumor heterogeneity or differences in the tumor's makeup that may not be detected by a single tissue sample.
"Reducing the number of invasive and expensive surgical biopsy procedures for patients with breast cancer is a core focus at
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This release contains forward-looking statements that are based upon current expectations or beliefs, as well as a number of assumptions about future events. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements and the assumptions upon which they are based are reasonable, we can give no assurance that such expectations and assumptions will prove to have been correct. Forward-looking statements are generally identifiable by the use of words like "may," "will," "should," "could," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "believe," "intend," or "project" or the negative of these words or other variations on these words or comparable terminology. To the extent that statements in this release are not strictly historical, including without limitation statements as to our ability to improve the detection and treatment of cancer, our ability to develop minimally
invasive blood-based tests to detect mutation in the ESR1, the role of ESR1 in endocrine therapy resistance and its ability to serve as a companion diagnostic to cancer therapeutics, physicians' use of our technology to personalize the treatment of patients with cancer, market acceptance of liquid biopsy, and our ability to expand into new cancer indications and grow our portfolio of biomarker assays, such statements are forward-looking, and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The reader is cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, as these statements are subject to numerous risk factors as set forth in our
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