NEW YORK – Travera on Friday said it has partnered with Genetic Alliance, a network of organizations focused on advancing genomics research in healthcare, to validate the predictive value of its functional precision medicine assay.
The Rapid Therapy Guidance Test measures the weight change of patients' live tumor cells in response to treatment with cancer drugs and predicts whether patients are likely to benefit from treatment. Travera has found that cell weight measured hours after cancer cells are exposed to a drug is often associated with the treatment's efficacy in patients.
The test is currently available through an early-access program as a tool for predicting whether patients with various solid tumors are likely to respond to treatments their doctors are considering. The assay can provide response predictions for more than 100 drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, according to the company.
Genetic Alliance is helping Travera recruit patients for the Rapid Therapy Guidance Test validation study among its partner organizations. Cancer patients can sign up to join the study through Luna, a genomic and health data platform that allows individuals to share their health information for research. Luna partnered with Genetic Alliance in 2019 and merged its health data collection platform with the nonprofit's research platform.