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news.Biomedical firm Beckman Coulter has signed two agreements with Johns Hopkins University giving the company exclusive options to license cancer genomics intellectual property. The first agreement covers 200 genes linked to breast and colon cancer, discovered in a landmark study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. The second agreement covers sequencing services and options to license genomic intellectual property from current studies on six additional cancers.
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Beckman Coulter Agencourt subsidiary’s Genomic Services performed the sequencing for this study, which was co-authored by James Hartigan, an Agencourt project manager. With these new agreements, Beckman Coulter will have first access to Johns Hopkins cancer study data. The company’s molecular diagnostics assay group is already evaluating the breast and colon cancer genes.
Bruce Wallace, vice president of Beckman Coulter’s molecular diagnostics business center, said: “These unprecedented agreements put Beckman Coulter in a unique, leading edge position in the molecular diagnostics field. Beckman Coulter will have the exclusive option to license any of the genetic mutations discovered in these studies that have diagnostic potential. Given the leadership role Johns Hopkins is playing in cancer genetics, our relationship with them will help propel us to the forefront of this rapidly developing field.”