SAGA Diagnostics, a cancer liquid biopsy and genomic testing company focused on precision oncology and non-invasive ultrasensitive monitoring of cancer patients, has entered into an assay development agreement with Astra Zeneca to develop SAGAsafe dPCR assays towards undisclosed methylated targets for analyses of tissue samples and liquid biopsies.
James Hadfield, Director Epigenomics, Oncology Translational Medicine, Oncology R&D, AstraZeneca, said: “We have chosen to partner with SAGA because of the ultrasensitive performance of the SAGAsafe technology and possibility to custom tailor highly complex dPCR assays to meet our desired analytical standards. We are excited about exploring this new area together with SAGA.”
SAGAsafe is an improvement of digital PCR that enables approximately 100-fold increased sensitivity compared to competitor methods, and can be used to quantify sequence variants in tissue samples as well as liquid biopsies such as blood plasma with unprecedented performance.
Lao Saal, co-founder and COO of SAGA Diagnostics, said: “We are honoured that Dr. Hadfield and his team have selected SAGA and the SAGAsafe platform to develop ultrasensitive dPCR methylation assays for AstraZeneca’s clinical research study, and are pleased to be working together again.”
