NuProbe Announced New Clinical Advisory Board Members from Yale and MD Anderson, Launched NGS Multi-gene Panels
HOUSTON, April 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — NuProbe, a molecular diagnostic startup, announced the addition of two world-renowned oncologists to their clinical advisory board: Amir A. Jazaeri, M.D., from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Abhijit Patel, M.D., Ph.D., from Yale University School of Medicine. These two new advisors join George M. Church, Ph.D., and David R. Walt, Ph.D., both from Harvard Medical School, on the NuProbe clinical advisory board, to advise on the product strategy and technology development of NuProbe. Meanwhile, NuProbe has recently launched the VarMapTM product line of two NGS multi-gene panels.
“Liquid biopsies have the potential to transform clinical care for gynecological cancers, but current commercial NGS offerings are very expensive and sometimes lack sufficient clinical sensitivity,” says Dr. Jazaeri. “NuProbe’s unique technologies and products could result in dramatic improvements in the accessibility and accuracy of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) testing for patient prognosis and recurrence monitoring.”
Dr. Jazaeri is currently the Vice Chair for Clinical Research and the Director of the Gynecologic Cancer Immunotherapy Program in the Department of Gynecologic Oncology and Reproductive Medicine at MD Anderson. He is the principal investigator for several multinational-pharma-company – sponsored and investigator initiated clinical trials. His clinical research interests also include comparison of traditional biomarkers and cfDNA biomarkers. Additionally, he is an invited reviewer for multiple journals and serves on the editorial board of the journal Gynecologic Oncology.
Dr. Patel is an Associate Professor of Therapeutic Radiology at Yale University. He is a physician-scientist with an active clinical practice in radiation oncology and with scientific expertise in nucleic acid biochemistry. His research lab at Yale is working to develop and clinically validate noninvasive DNA-based cancer diagnostics, with a particular focus on assessment of therapeutic efficacy and early cancer detection. He has many publications in top journals including Nature, JAMA and Cancer Research.
“I was truly impressed by the Blocker Displacement Amplification (BDA) technology when it was first developed at Rice University. I participated in the first set of clinical sample validation studies using BDA, and the results showed excellent concordance with NGS data,” says Dr. Patel. “I am enthusiastic to serve on NuProbe’s clinical advisory board and look forward to helping guide the commercialization of genomic and molecular diagnostic panels based on the BDA technology.”
(The quotes represent the personal views of the individuals, and do not represent the views of Yale or MD Anderson. By policy, Yale University and MD Anderson do not endorse commercial products or entities.)
“We are very grateful and excited to have Dr. Jazaeri and Dr. Patel to join NuProbe as advisors,” says David Zhang, Ph.D., Co-founder of and Head of Innovation at NuProbe, and Associate Professor of Bioengineering at Rice University. “Their deep insights from clinical work and translational research will help guide NuProbe to develop products that fulfill unmet clinical needs and have a positive impact on patient outcomes.”
In addition, NuProbe launched the VarMap™ product line, including two NGS panels for non-small-cell lung cancer and melanoma. These multi-gene sequencing panels allow for detection of low abundance tumor-specific mutations. Powered by BDA technology, the VarMapTM panels require only 500x depth to detect and quantitate tumor-specific mutations at 0.1% variant allele frequency.
About NuProbe Global
NuProbe is a cutting-edge genomics company with revolutionary molecular diagnostic technologies to reduce the cost of NGS by over 50-fold, and improve the sensitivity of qPCR, Sanger, and nanopore sequencing by over 100-fold. NuProbe has sites in Houston, USA, Shanghai, China and Suzhou, China. NuProbe’s vision is to offer affordable, timely, and accurate disease state information to enable precision medicine and improve patient outcomes. https://nuprobe.com
