GeneNews secures $2 million for development of prostate biomarkers

GeneNews Limited, a company focused on developing simple blood-based biomarker tests for the early detection of diseases and personalized health management, today announced it has signed an agreement with an Asian Biomedical consortium to develop blood-based biomarkers for the detection and management of prostate diseases.

Under the agreement, the consortium will provide US$2 million to GeneNews to conduct the work required to identify and validate biomarkers related to prostate disease using its proprietary Sentinel Principle and Discovery Funnel technologies. If a biomarker panel is successfully validated, GeneNews will then develop and commercialize a prostate disease test based on these biomarkers to be known as ProstateSentry. All intellectual property generated in the identification and validation of prostate disease biomarkers shall remain vested in GeneNews and the consortium shall be entitled to receive certain royalties from the commercial sales of ProstateSentry.

"As our population ages, the incidence of prostate diseases including prostate cancer has been growing significantly. In addition, current methods of assessing prostate health are either invasive or provide information that is not consistently actionable," said K. Wayne Marshall, MD, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of GeneNews. "While our primary focus is currently on the development of our lead colon cancer product, ColonSentry, this non-dilutive investment will allow us accelerate the development of a second product in our Sentry pipeline. Given the results we have generated to date in prostate cancer, we are well positioned to deliver on these objectives."

In June 2006, GeneNews reported results from a study that identified a set of blood biomarkers which were able to distinguish patients with aggressive forms of prostate cancer from controls. The study abstract, entitled "Blood-based biomarkers for detecting aggressive prostate cancer at time of biopsy," was presented at the 2006 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.

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