Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Thermo Fisher to Develop NGS Pediatric Cancer Test Panel

By Ron Shinkman, Editor, Laboratory Industry Report

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) has entered into a pact with Thermo Fisher Scientific to develop a panel of next-generation sequencing tests specifically for pediatric cancer patients.

The deal brings together one of the largest pediatric hematology/oncology programs in the country, and one of the biggest developers of test platforms.

The panel under development would include virtually all somatic genetic alterations identified for childhood cancer, including DNA mutations, gene amplifications and the expression of more than 1,000 gene fusion variants. The panel would require as little as 10 nanograms of DNA and RNA from tissue. It would be based on Thermo Fisher’s ion torrent NGS platform and AmpliSeq technology.

“Targeted sequencing is showing tremendous promise as an effective and rapid solution to elucidate the molecular underpinnings of cancer,” said Joseph Bernardo, president of Thermo Fisher’s clinical sequencing division, in a statement.

Neither a timeframe for the panel’s availability nor the financial structure of the deal has been announced.

“We anticipate the pediatric panel to be of great value to clinical researchers dedicated to improving outcomes in childhood cancer, providing a tool with the potential to further advance personalized cancer treatment,” said Alan S. Wayne, M.D., director of the Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases at CHLA, in a statement. “Such personalized cancer care is of considerable benefit to patients and practitioners as we work to develop genomically targeted therapies.”

Last year, CHLA devoted $50 million toward pushing genomic sequencing and other personalized medicine initiatives.