HTG, JWCI collaborate to develop new approaches for early stage primary cutaneous melanoma diagnosis

May 3 2010

HTG, Inc., provider of the quantitative Nuclease Protection Assay (qNPA™), today announced it signed a collaboration agreement with the John Wayne Cancer Institute (JWCI) at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California. Under the terms of the agreement, HTG and JWCI (Department of Molecular Oncology, Dave S. B. Hoon, Ph.D., Director) will collaborate to generate a novel mRNA signature that can measure the gene expression differences in melanoma and benign nevi using HTG's qNPA technology in classical surgical pathology samples.

“The program will provide new approaches to improve diagnosis of early stage primary cutaneous melanomas. This area of diagnosis has been problematic whereby, novel sensitive molecular diagnosis approaches may be more informative and accurate”

Dr. Hoon is investigating the implications of differential gene expression in human diseases such as melanoma. The ability to distinguish between early stage primary melanomas and benign nevi is important given the difficulty that is sometimes encountered in diagnosing primary melanoma and in turn managing the disease better before onset of clinical metastasis.

"Our work with Dr. Hoon in this research program will further establish HTG's qNPA technology as a useful and robust validation and diagnostic platform. We are excited to be part of this collaboration and believe our multiplex gene expression platform coupled with our extraction free method of analyzing formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) samples makes us ideally suited for this important application," said TJ Johnson, President and CEO, HTG.

"The program will provide new approaches to improve diagnosis of early stage primary cutaneous melanomas. This area of diagnosis has been problematic whereby, novel sensitive molecular diagnosis approaches may be more informative and accurate," said Dr. Hoon.