Five-year $13.3 million deal is aimed at commercializing CRC staging test and R&D for genomic tests.

Signal Genetics acquired the U.S. CLIA service laboratory of DiagnoCure and a worldwide exclusive license to its Previstage™ GCC Colorectal Cancer Staging Test as part of a five-year, $13.3 million collaboration agreement executed Tuesday.

The two transactions account for $10.8 million over five years. Signal will pay DiagnoCure $5.7 million up front for the laboratory, as well as a minimum $5.1 million in annual installments and royalty payments over the first five years of the license agreement.

Signal will also pay DiagnoCure $2.5 million under an R&D agreement to advance the development of certain genomic tests for personalized medicine being developed in its Quebec City laboratories. All payments will be made in cash.

“The R&D agreement provides Signal and its affiliates access to DiagnoCure’s extensive experience in developing personalized genomic tests in oncology that are complementary technologies to the company’s pipeline,” Signal CEO Joe Hernandez stated.

Through a new subsidiary, CC Health LLC, Signal plans to expand its sales force and marketing partnerships to sell Previstage GCC, Hernandez says, adding that his company considers the colorectal cancer staging test to have an estimated global market potential of more than $400 million. Further commercializing Previstage GCC was among goals of the collaboration agreement with DiagnoCure.

“The new inflow of funds, added to the growing revenues generated by the sale of the PCA3 prostate cancer test, will strengthen DiagnoCure’s financial base and allow us to build on our core expertise in developing clinically relevant and robust genomic tests in cancer, in particular lung cancer,” states Yves Fradet, M.D., DiagnoCure’s president and chief medical officer.

According to DiagnoCure, Previstage GCC is the only colorectal cancer staging test on the market that provides prognostic information based on the tumor burden measured at the molecular level in the lymph nodes. 

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