Exact Sciences Corp. (NASDAQ: EXAS), a leading provider of cancer screening and diagnostic tests, today announced that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has selected the company’s testing laboratory in Phoenix, AZ to participate in the ComboMATCH clinical trials, one of the NCI-funded precision medicine initiatives. As a ComboMATCH-designated lab, Exact Sciences will use its new OncoExTra™ test to analyze tumor tissue and paired normal blood samples from patient participants and uncover the specific abnormalities in a patient’s tumor that may be most effective to treat. OncoExTra is a comprehensive next-generation sequencing (NGS) test that provides a comprehensive molecular picture of the patient’s cancer and actionable results, matching a patient’s unique cancer to a targeted therapy or clinical trial.
The ComboMATCH registration trial is the gateway to a set of clinical trials evaluating new anti-cancer treatment combinations directed by NGS testing in select groups of adults and children with locally advanced or advanced (metastatic) cancer.
“Most cancers do not have a single underlying cause or driver; so, no single targeted therapy is likely to work, especially in the long-term given the challenge of drug resistance,” said James M. Ford, M.D., Stanford University School of Medicine, co-leader of ComboMATCH and leader of the coordination effort by the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group. “Mounting evidence demonstrates the important role of genomic profiling to guide therapeutic choices when treating cancer, and offers the potential for greater patient benefit, paving the way to new frontiers in cancer treatment.”
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