Biocept Targets Spreading Tumors With Advance in Diagnostics

the extremely rare tumor cells can actually be collected from the filter for genetic analysis. That’s something that existing tumor-cell counting technologies can’t do yet, according to Coutts.

Luke reminds me that researchers who really dig into this technology are also going to ask hard questions about whether some of the microtumors are really correlated with more suffering and shorter lifespan for patients, or whether they are actually a false alarm. Answering questions like that will take time and money.

Still, there is a renewed push going on in academia to find ways to detect cancer accurately, and at earlier stages. The ability to genetically analyze a patient’s cancer cells—so that oncologists can determine the optimum course of treatment—is considered one of the defining hallmarks of personalized medicine, Coutts said. “With all these solid tumors, we’re going to see tremendous use of biomarkers to determine the right course of treatment,” he added. In a patient with breast cancer, for example, Coutts said genetic analysis of the circulating tumor cells can help determine which patients will respond to drugs like Genentech’s trastuzumab (Herceptin).

“We’re planning to launch our first test for breast cancer this fall,” Coutts said by telephone earlier this week, in an update on Biocept’s progress. “We’re going to follow up in the first quarter of 2011 with the launch of other tests for non-small cell lung cancer and colo-rectal cancer,” he added.

All of the capital that Biocept has raised so far has come from

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.