Molecular diagnostics company MDxHealth and partner NovioGendix have been awarded a $1.1 million grant that will be applied toward research and development of a new bladder cancer diagnostic.
Belgium-based MDxHealth (BRU:MDXH), which has its U.S. headquarters in Durham, North Carolina, develops companion diagnostics for cancer treatments. The grant to MDxHealth and Dutch molecular diagnostics firm NovioGendix comes from Eurotrans-Bio, a European Commission initiative supporting biotech R&D between companies and academia. NovioGendix was spun out of Radboud University Nigmegen Medical Centre in the Netherlands.
MDxHealth CEO Jan Groen said in a statement that the grant provides both companies with the resources to further investigate the biological indicators and patterns seen in bladder cancer. Scientists will study patient samples collected from the existing collaboration between the two companies. MDxHealth and NovioGendix plan to use the money to discover and validate tumor markers, which will guide treatment decisions.
The companies say there is an urgent need for accurate biomarkers of bladder cancer, its progression and its risk of recurrence so diagnostic tests can be developed for earlier and targeted therapeutic intervention.
MDxHealth was founded in 2003 as OncoMethylome Sciences to develop companion diagnostics that could help physicians diagnose and treat cancer. The company last October changed its name to MDxHealth as part of strategy shift from out-licensing its biomarker discoveries to instead developing and commercializing those discoveries on its own.
MDxHealth last month raised $11.7 million in a private placement of securities that included an investment from Belgian life sciences entrepreneur and investor Rudi Marien, whose investment firm Biovest secured a 9 percent stake in MDxHealth.
