Here is the headline news:
NEW YORK – Veracyte said after the close of the market Monday that it has acquired Convergent Genomics, which has developed a urine-based DNA testing platform for cancer diagnostics.
The acquisition includes $150 million in upfront cash and up to $30 million in additional cash tied to milestones related to reimbursement efforts for the company’s UroAmp test for urothelial cancers.
Convergent has specifically validated its assay for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) therapy response monitoring and post-treatment surveillance.
NMIBC is generally confined to the bladder and may shed only limited tumor DNA into the bloodstream, which can make blood-based detection challenging, Veracyte noted. Urine, by contrast, comes into direct contact with the tumor and contains urinary tumor DNA (utDNA).
UroAmp uses sequencing and machine learning to analyze 60 urothelial cancer genes while also measuring changes across the whole genome, according to the company’s website. The company has validated this approach to determine minimal residual disease (MRD) in patients with a history of bladder cancer before and after treatment to monitor therapy efficacy.
