• 19 Dec 2023
• Admin
• News Article

Haystack Oncology inks collaboration with Rutgers Cancer Institute to use Haystack MRD in clinical study of early-stage triple-negative breast cancer

Haystack Oncology, a Quest Diagnostics company, has entered into a collaboration with Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey to use Haystack Oncology's industry-leading personalized MRD technology (Haystack MRD) to help evaluate therapeutic response and provide molecular insights for a Rutgers Cancer Institute clinical trial examining early-stage triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients undergoing treatment in the adjuvant setting with liposomal doxorubicin and carboplatin. Rutgers Cancer Institute together with RWJBarnabas Health is the state's only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center.

"We're excited to work with Rutgers Cancer Institute in their efforts to optimize therapeutic strategies for patients with early-stage breast cancer," said Dan Edelstein, vice president and general manager of Haystack Oncology. "With unparalleled sensitivity, Haystack MRD provides a tool for anticipating and evaluating treatment-related benefits to a greater depth than standard clinical and radiographic metrics, making it well-equipped to support clinical studies such as this, which are essential for advancing cancer care."

"Triple-negative breast cancer is a subtype of breast cancer that is aggressive by nature with a complex biology, therefore, the disease tends to have a worse prognosis," said Mridula George, MD, associate program director of Breast Medical Oncology at Rutgers Cancer Institute and principal investigator of the study, which is also open at select RWJBarnabas Health sites across New Jersey. "We are excited to use Haystack's MRD technology to monitor treatment response in our clinical trial that could help inform future studies and novel approaches that will result in better outcomes for our patients."

Haystack Oncology represents the culmination of over 20 years of technical and clinical development in liquid biopsy technologies by cancer genomics pioneers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics, developed Haystack MRD, a next generation tumor informed approach for the measurement of minimal residual disease. Haystack MRD uses an error-corrected ctDNA technology to detect down to one ctDNA molecule in a million. Haystack Oncology works with biopharmaceutical companies to advance important therapeutics to global markets, from early phase clinical development to companion diagnostics. By detecting patients with measurable disease for enrollment, and helping to identify early treatment response and disease clearance as endpoints for treatment efficacy, Haystack Oncology can accelerate and improve the efficiency of clinical development programs. Haystack Oncology testing is CLIA certified in the US and is available for biopharmaceutical clinical development in laboratories located in Baltimore, Maryland, Hamburg, Germany and Helsinki, Finland.

Quest Diagnostics empowers people to take action to improve health outcomes. Derived from the world's largest database of clinical lab results, our diagnostic insights reveal new avenues to identify and treat disease, inspire healthy behaviors and improve health care management. Quest annually serves one in three adult Americans and half the physicians and hospitals in the United States, and our nearly 50,000 employees understand that, in the right hands and with the right context, our diagnostic insights can inspire actions that transform lives.