Epic Sciences Compiling Data on Ultra-Sensitive Cancer Diagnostic

Epic Sciences CEO Murali Prahalad (Epic Sciences image used with permission)

San Diego’s Epic Sciences said today it has signed an agreement with LabCorp (NYSE: [[ticker:LH]]) to help speed up European clinical trials that are using Epic’s technology to identify tumor cells in the blood.

LabCorp, the Burlington, NC, company officially known as Laboratory Corporation of America, operates one of the world’s largest networks of medical laboratories for testing clinical samples. Under their agreement, LabCorp’s central lab in Belgium will pre-process blood samples from clinical trials throughout Europe and send prepared slides to Epic’s certified lab in La Jolla.

Epic, founded in 2008 with technology developed in the lab of Peter Kuhn, a cell biologist at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, describes its test as a “blood fluid biopsy” to detect and analyze circulating tumor cells in blood samples.

According to Epic Sciences, a benign solid tissue tumor appears to begin shedding tumor cells into the blood stream at the first signs of malignancy. The tumor cells circulate through the system (many are destroyed) and eventually stick to the inside wall of a distant blood vessel, where they can form secondary tumors through a process known as metastasis. Conventional cancer diagnostics cannot detect these rare tumor cells—a blood sample with 30 million cells on a prepared slide typically has only about five of these circulating tumor cells.

Cancer cells are red and blue and normal blood cells are green and blue.
Cancer cells are red and blue and normal blood cells are green and blue (Image courtesy Epic Sciences).

Epic uses fluorescent antibodies that bind to cytokeratins, a key protein in circulating tumor cells that can be used to identify different types of carcinomas. Epic says preparation of the slides is crucial, and one reason why the deal with LabCorp is important. The company uses a digital microscope and an image-processing algorithm to scan each slide for clumps of aberrant fluorescence. The process requires high-performance computing to help analyze and manage the data, and high-definition imaging to help cellular pathologists identify and analyze fluorescing clumps of the rare tumor cells.

Murali Prahalad, who was hired as Epic’s CEO in August, says the company’s technology can be used as a “companion diagnostic” to categorize patients for particular cancer drugs, based on

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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.