bioMerieux partners with Ipsen on companion diagnostics for cancer

New personalized medicine cancer tests will be developed through a partnership announced between bioMerieux and Ipsen. Besides diagnosing disease, the companies expect the tests will also help speed development of new drugs to treat various cancers.

Medical diagnostics company bioMerieux is partnering with pharmaceutical firm Ipsen to create new personalized medicine cancer tests.

The companies said the global collaboration will focus on hormone-dependent cancers, and will leverage Paris-based Ipsen’s (PARIS:IPN) broad portfolio of compounds and bioMerieux’s (EURONEXT:BIM) diagnostic tests.

The companies said they will work together to develop therapeutic and companion diagnostic tests, particularly for the prevention and treatment of prostate and breast cancers, neuro-endocrine tumors and pituitary tumors. The personalized medicine-based tests will use molecular information from individual patients to guide preventive and therapeutic decisions. Development of such companion diagnostics could also aid Ipsen’s drug development by accelerating early clinical proof-of-concept of its drug candidates.

Marcy L’Etoile, France-based bioMerieux has its North American headquarters in Durham, North Carolina. BioMerieux got into the arena of molecular diagnostics in 2008 through the $60 million purchase of San Diego company AviaraDx. AviaraDx had developed methods of testing the molecular biology of a sample in order to diagnose cancer.

BioMerieux has since collaborated on companion diagnostics with several pharmaceutical companies including Merck (NYSE:MRK) and GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK).

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