Transgenomic expands license deal with Exiqon for LNA oligonucleotides

LNA oligos offer dramatically improved sensitivity and specificity compared to traditional DNA chemistries.

The amended agreement provides the company with access to LNA oligos for use with all of its ultra-high sensitivity mutation enrichment technologies, including its Multiplexed ICE COLD-PCRTM (MX-ICP).

The deal also covers the company’s commercial worldwide use of LNA oligos for analysis of all cancer genes on all platforms, including cutting edge approaches such as next-generation sequencing (NGS).

Transgenomic president and chief executive officer Paul Kinnon said: "This expanded agreement supports the global commercialization of our revolutionary Multiplexed ICE COLD-PCR enrichment technology.

"Use of Exiqon’s LNA oligos with our MX-ICP technology significantly enhances identification of very low concentration cancer mutations in liquid biopsies.

"This is vital to enabling clinicians to initially choose the right mutation-targeted cancer therapy and also enables them to monitor the cancer and detect emerging resistance to drugs over the course of treatment."

The Multiplexed ICE COLD-PCR delivers at least a 100-fold improvement in sensitivity compared to standard methodologies and supplements both known and previously unknown genetic alterations in any gene using a single multiplexed assay.

Kinnon noted: "Use of LNAs enables MX-ICP to work equally well in all tumor DNA analyses, whether in tissue biopsies or in blood- or urine-based liquid biopsies.

"The expanded agreement guarantees our access to LNA oligos for all of our ultra-high mutation enrichment technologies, including the multiplexed MX-ICP that makes possible simultaneous analysis of multiple mutations in multiple genes.

"It covers Transgenomic’s commercial use of LNA oligos worldwide for cancer genes on any platform and for all applications."