Epic Sciences and The Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium Collaborate to Advance Therapeutic Development

SAN DIEGO, March 9, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Epic Sciences and The Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium (PCCTC), the leading consortium for Phase 1/2 and Phase 2 clinical trials in prostate cancer, announced today they have entered into a collaboration to apply Epic's circulating tumor cell (CTC) technology in multiple investigator-initiated clinical trials to advance the development of new prostate cancer treatments. 

"Liquid biopsies could help accelerate the clinical development of new targeted therapies to treat prostate cancer by providing rapid access to ongoing and timely information about a patient's cancer on a cellular and molecular level," said Jake Vinson, CEO at PCCTC. "We have been impressed with Epic's circulating tumor cell technology's capacity to help develop drugs in more precisely defined and biologically relevant patient groups."

Epic is developing highly informative diagnostic tests that can detail the dynamic changes in gene and protein expression that occur during the course of cancer treatments. From a simple blood test, Epic's no cell left behind™ technology examines approximately six million cells across more than 90 parameters to analyze all possible types of CTCs. With real-time information about both the primary tumor and secondary metastases, CTCs provide a comprehensive picture of mutations in key regulatory and biochemical pathways to inform therapeutic development, therapy selection and drug resistance mechanisms.

"Circulating tumor cells can describe the global heterogeneity of cancer in patients at multiple time points and can be used to track the genetic and proteomic changes that occur under therapeutic selection pressure," said Murali Prahalad, Ph.D., president and CEO of Epic Sciences. "Collaborating with the PCCTC, we can help advance clinical trials by using Epic's technology to monitor treatment effectiveness and understand acquired resistance."

Epic has more than 30 collaborations with pharmaceutical companies and leading cancer research centers spanning 67 clinical studies.

About The Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium (PCCTC)

In 2005, the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Department of Defense (DOD) Prostate Cancer Research Program (PCRP) initiated the Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials Consortium (PCCTC) in response to gaps identified in prostate cancer clinical research by physician investigators and prostate cancer advocates. By establishing transparent project co-development between investigators, research sites and industry partners, the PCCTC has created a new paradigm for evaluating prostate cancer therapies. Uniform trial endpoints, the use of validated biomarkers, and the adaptation of the clinical states model of prostate cancer have further enabled accelerate drug development within the consortium. The PCCTC is now a major multi-institutional clinical research organization consisting of a nationwide network of physicians at 15 academic institutions specializing in cutting-edge prostate cancer research. For more information, please visit www.pcctc.org.

About Epic Sciences

Epic Sciences, Inc. is developing novel diagnostics to personalize and advance the treatment and management of cancer. Epic's mission is to enable the rapid and non-invasive detection of genetic and molecular changes in cancer throughout a patient's journey. The company was founded on a powerful platform to identify and characterize rare cells, including circulating tumor cells (CTCs). Epic's no cell left behind™ technology helps match patients to targeted therapies and monitor for drug resistance, so that the best treatment path can be chosen at every clinical decision point. Today, we partner with leading pharmaceutical companies and major cancer centers around the world. Epic's goal is to commercialize our technology to increase the success rate of cancer drugs in clinical trials and improve patient outcomes by providing physicians real-time information to guide treatment choices.

Further information is available on the Company's website, www.epicsciences.com.