Ventana Medical Systems Inc. and TGen announced a broad collaborative research agreement to discover and develop diagnostic markers for treating cancer, starting with a focus on diagnostic, prognostic and drug biomarkers for pancreatic cancer, the fourth leading cause of death from cancer in the United States.
This year, an estimated 45,000 people will be diagnosed and more than 38,000 patients will die from pancreatic cancer, TGen and Ventana said. Worldwide, more than 213,000 are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year, but fewer than a quarter of those patients survive more than a year, and fewer than 6 percent survive more than five years—the worst survival rate of any cancer.
The collaboration will seek new diagnostic markers to detect cancers earlier and pinpoint more effective therapies.
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