IRVINE, CA and AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS, FEBRUARY 29, 2012 – Agendia, an innovative molecular cancer diagnostics company, today announced that the company is a recipient of the 2011 Scrip Award for “Best Partnership” for its cooperative alliance between Agendia, AstraZeneca and the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI). This is the seventh annual competition to recognize and honor achievements throughout the pharmaceutical industry.
The collaboration between Agendia, AstraZeneca and NKI represents a new approach to personalized diagnostics with the goal of accelerating the delivery of promising personalized therapies to patients by segmenting colorectal cancer at the molecular level.
“This is a model of how bio/pharma and academia can work in new paradigms involving a biotech, a pharma and a major academic research center,” panel judges on behalf of Scrip said of the partnership. “This has the potential to pioneer new understanding of colorectal cancer and result in new diagnostics to understand a personalized approach to the treatment of this disease that does not now exist.”
Scrip, the leading source for global pharmaceutical industry news, gathers highly respected and independent experts from throughout the pharmaceutical industry to recognize innovations across the field including research, clinical trials and breakthrough drugs. The Best Partnership Alliance award acknowledges the importance of partnerships involving pharmaceutical and biotech companies in developing novel therapeutics.
“This award recognizes the unique alliance that brings together high-level academic research as well as companies known for the successful development of molecular diagnostics and targeted therapies,” said David Macdonald, Agendia’s CEO. “A key feature of this collaboration is that personalized medicine can be developed much more quickly by combining the different expertise of each of the three individual partners from the beginning. The collaboration began in 2011 and is already producing interesting leads.”
About Agendia:
Agendia is a leading global commercial molecular diagnostic company that develops and markets genomic-based diagnostic products that improve the quality of life for cancer patients and simplifies complex treatment decisions for their physicians. Agendia’s Symphony™ suite of breast cancer products is based on the analysis of hundreds of genes in a patient’s breast and provides unprecedented biological insight to address complex treatment decisions. Symphony includes MammaPrint, the first and only FDA-cleared IVDMIA breast cancer recurrence assay, as well as BluePrint­­, a molecular subtyping assay, TargetPrint^®, an ER/PR/HER2 expression assay, and TheraPrint^®, a therapy selection assay. Together, these tests help physicians determine a patient’s individual risk for metastasis, which patients will benefit from chemo or hormonal therapy, and which patients do not require these treatments and can instead be treated with other less arduous and costly methods.
In addition to the Symphony suite of tests, Agendia has a rich pipeline of genomic products in development based on its world-class genomic platform. The company also collaborates with pharmaceutical companies to develop companion diagnostic tests in the area of oncology and is a critical partner in the ISPY-2 and MINDACT trials.
Agendia was founded in 2003 as a spin-off of the Netherlands Cancer Institute and is based in Irvine, California, United States, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. For more information, please visit www.agendia.com.
For further information, please contact:
icochet Public Relations
Todd Aydelotte
Tel: +1 212 679 3300
E-mail: todd@ricochetpr.com