Xconomy: Epic Sciences Advances Diagnostic for Late-Stage Prostate Cancer
Summary
With $40M in New Cash, Epic Sciences Advances Diagnostic for Late-Stage Prostate Cancer Xconomy San Diego — When San Diego’s Epic Sciences raised $30 million almost three years ago, CEO Murali Prahalad told me he saw a big opportunity to use the company’s technology as a diagnostic test to assess how well a cancer patient is responding to specific anti-cancer drug regimens.Epic said Friday it had raised an additional $40 million that will be used in part to bring the first of these diagnostic tests to market under a partnership with Genomic Health (NASDAQ: GHDX).“Epic has been rapidly developing a portfolio, a series of predictive tests for cancer that tell a doctor whether a specific drug will work,” Prahalad said in a phone interview.The Epic diagnostic test uses a blood sample to identify a specific protein fragment in the nucleus of circulating tumor cells in patients with advanced prostate cancer.Epic uses high-performance computing to help analyze and manage data from scores of additional tests, such as molecular assays that differentiate the type of cancer cells based on protein expression or genomic markers.