Honey Reddi and the team from the Clinical Genomics Laboratory in Farmington, Connecticut.
The Clinical Genomics Laboratory will participate as an NCI-MATCH designated laboratory, helping to connect potentially eligible cancer patients at NCI-MATCH sites with clinical trials.
The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) today announced that its Clinical Genomics Laboratory is participating as a CLIA-certified/accredited laboratory for the NCI-Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice (NCI-MATCH or EAY131) precision medicine clinical trial.
As a new NCI-MATCH designated laboratory, JAX’s Clinical Genomics Laboratory will look at tumor gene abnormalities to help clinicians identify and refer potentially eligible patients to NCI-MATCH clinical trials. Patients are eligible for genomic testing if they are currently being treated at an NCI-MATCH participating site. “As a nonprofit institute, this program allows JAX to continue our unswerving focus on genetics and genomics to significantly improve human health,” said Clinical Lab director at JAX Genomic Medicine. “To play a role in connecting patients – often those with no other options – with precision medicine cancer trials, to help clinicians give their patients better options, is truly a gift.”
NCI-MATCH is the largest precision medicine cancer trial to date. It identifies personalized treatments for cancer patients based upon genomic changes in tumors, which are found through genomic sequencing and other tests. The program seeks to determine the effectiveness of treatment that is directed by genomic profiling in patients with solid tumors, lymphomas, or myelomas that have progressed following standard treatments, or for rare cancer types for which there is no standard treatment. Tumor Gene testing by a designated lab is the only pathway for patients to enroll into NCI-MATCH.
“Tumor profiling and genomic testing are becoming common in daily practice for oncologists to help guide clinical care for cancer patients,” said NCI-MATCH study co-chair James V. Tricoli, Ph.D., Chief, Diagnostic Biomarkers and Technology Branch, Cancer Diagnosis Program, Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis at the NCI. “We require qualifying laboratories [like The Jackson Laboratory] to proactively identify potentially eligible patients for the NCI-MATCH trial.” “NCI-MATCH is a discovery trial whose very nature—identifying and exploring knowledge gaps in precision oncology, and advancing new hypotheses—means studying small subsets of patients,” said ECOG-ACRIN study chair Keith T. Flaherty, MD, director of Clinical Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “We are qualifying additional laboratories so we can cast a wider net for patients with the biomarkers of interest.”
“We are excited to have the opportunity to contribute to improving the treatment and management of cancer,” said Honey Reddi, Ph.D., FACMG, Clinical Lab director at JAX Genomic Medicine. “This is a significant milestone and a testament to our excellent work as a genomic testing laboratory.”
The JAX Clinical Genomics laboratory, is CLIA/CAP accredited and integrates the latest sequencing technologies with the insights of an experienced multidisciplinary team of specialists and scientists to help clinicians and translational researchers select the best options for personalized care. The clinical laboratory offers ActionSeq™ (212 genes), FusionSeq™2.0 (56 genes), and the Cancer Treatment Profile™ (358 gene) testing panels, which assess all identified functional variants for clinical relevance in the treatment and management of cancer.
The NCI-MATCH trial is co-led by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (ECOG-ACRIN). To learn more about NCI-MATCH, including clinical trial sites across the country, visit www.ecog-acrin.org/nci-match-eay131.