07 Feb Exact Sciences and Mayo Clinic extend, expand collaboration to continue fighting cancer through advanced screening
Exact Sciences Corp. and Mayo Clinic today announced a five-year extension and expansion of their collaboration, broadening their efforts to develop screening, surveillance and diagnostic tests beyond colorectal cancer to address other diseases within the gastrointestinal tract.
The amended agreement extends the collaboration for five more years with David Ahlquist, M.D., a Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist, and his lab at Mayo Clinic. Exact Scienceswill continue to have rights to certain intellectual property, including patents, know-how and new markers.
The original June 11, 2009 agreement between Exact Sciences and Mayo Clinic led to the development of Cologuard, which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved on August 11, 2014. Cologuard is the first and only FDA-approved stool DNA-based colorectal cancer screening test.
“This unique collaboration is producing powerful results,” said John Noseworthy, M.D., president and CEO of Mayo Clinic. “The success of our teams in developing Cologuard exemplifies what can happen when two organizations combine their expertise and unite toward a single goal.”
“By expanding our relationship with Mayo Clinic, we have an opportunity to build on our shared successes and continue looking for new opportunities to take on some of the deadliest forms of cancer,” said Kevin Conroy, CEO and chairman of Exact Sciences. “This collaboration and our ability to leverage both institutions’ distinctly different strengths is unique in American industry. But our ambitions cannot end with Cologuard. We expect our collaboration to continue producing breakthroughs that can change patients’ lives.”
For more information about Cologuard, visit www.CologuardTest.com.
Disclosure statement – David Ahlquist, M.D., is a co-inventor of the technology that has been licensed to Exact Sciences from Mayo Clinic. Under that licensing agreement,Mayo Clinic and Dr. Ahlquist share in equity and royalties. Revenue Mayo Clinic receives is used to support Mayo’s not-for-profit mission in patient care, education and research.