Quintiles Adds Suite of PI3K Biomarker Assays

Quintiles has added a comprehensive suite of biomarker assays to investigate the phosphoinositide 3-kinases (PI3K) cancer survival pathway, the focus of numerous anti-cancer therapies under development. Understanding the PI3K pathway is key to developing new drugs to inhibit or block this pathway, cutting off a metabolic function needed for certain cancers to survive, according to a company statement.

“P13K is an important target for many biopharmaceutical companies,” said Sarah Bacus, Ph.D., senior vice president and chief scientific officer, Translational Medicine Oncology, Quintiles. “Understanding this pathway will help support the clinical development of targeted therapies to this pathway and advances in personalized medicine. We anticipated the need for a toolset to help biopharma companies understand this pathway, and now believe that Quintiles has the most comprehensive suite of PI3K biomarker assays available.”

The PI3K biomarker assays includes: PTEN IHC, an immunohistochemistry (IHC) biomarker assay to measure the amount of phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) expression in human tumors; PI3K FISH, a Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH) test for clinical development; PTEN FISH, a biomarker assay that detects whether the PTEN gene has been lost through deletion; PI3KCA mutations by real-time PCR, a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis to profile the most common PI3KCA mutations so patients can be screened and randomized into clinical studies; and PI3KCA mutations by pyrosequencing, a next-gen sequence analysis technology that analyzes more than a dozen PI3KCA mutations, spanning both common and rare variants.