HalioDx SAS, a diagnostic company in immuno-oncology, and NanoString Technologies, Inc, a provider of life science tools for translational research and molecular diagnostic products, have entered into an agreement to jointly develop and commercialise advanced gene expression assays for assessing the response to immunotherapies.

Under this collaboration agreement, HalioDx and NanoString will jointly develop innovative immune gene expression assays on the NanoString nCounter Analysis System based on discoveries of Dr. Jérôme Galon, Research Director at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (Inserm) and his team (Inserm UMRS1138) at Cordeliers Research Center. HalioDx and NanoString will jointly offer products and associated services to academic, pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers worldwide.

The products and services to be developed under the collaboration will enable researchers and drug developers to use assays to assess responses to immunotherapies and select patients who are most likely to benefit from the therapies. This collaboration expands both companies’ leadership in precision immuno-oncology and offers the potential for companion diagnostic collaborations with biopharmaceutical partners in the future.

“This collaboration with HalioDx adds another powerful tool to the nCounter immuno-oncology toolkit to support our customers’ efforts in developing clinically validated predictive biomarkers for cancer immunotherapies. With the ability to process small tissue samples with minimal hands-on time, NanoString's nCounter technology provides a powerful solution to researchers and drug developers who are in search of biomarkers for precision oncology, and is ideally suited to answering complex questions in translational research in the field of immuno-oncology,” said Brad Gray, president and chief executive officer of NanoString Technologies.

“HalioDx is very excited to jointly develop with NanoString our innovative predictive and prognostic immune gene expression signatures on the nCounter platform, one of the best multi-analyte testing platforms for translating gene expression signatures to routine diagnostic use. At HalioDx, we want to develop diagnostic solutions that can be easily used in routine clinical practice settings and we selected the nCounter platform because of its robustness, turn-around time, and compatibility with formalin-fixed-paraffin-embedded tissue samples. Our co-developed immune gene expression assays will complement the breakthrough Immunoscore IHC assay, to foster the development of more precise immunotherapies,” said Vincent Fert, co-founder and CEO of HalioDx.