Fluidigm Corporation and OncoMed Pharmaceuticals Announce Strategic Collaboration

OncoMed Pharmaceuticals and Fluidigm Corporation have announced an initiative to apply the latter's unique microfluidic tools to the analysis of tumor cell heterogeneity, including cancer stem cells. The collaboration will combine the latter's microfluidic platforms with the former's proprietary cancer stem cell sorting technology to generate tools for analyzing, quantifying and developing treatments that are directed at this tumorigenic cell population.

In the initial application, OncoMed will apply Fluidigm's BioMark System along with their proprietary Dynamic Array Integrated Fluidic Circuits (IFCs) to perform detailed gene expression analysis of solid tumors at the whole tumor and single-cell level.

This phase will track changes in cancer stem cells that are found in human tumors following treatment with the former's pipeline of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. The companies will apply this same technology to analyze tumor heterogeneity and cancer stem cell frequency across the former's human tumor bank. The collaboration also has the potential to include novel and next-generation microfluidic and tissue sample-preparation technologies that Fluidigm is currently developing.