GeneCentric Therapeutics Announces Commercial Availability of PurIST℠ Test for Pancreatic Cancer

GeneCentric Therapeutics, a company making precision medicine more precise through RNA-based diagnostics, announced today that its PurIST℠ test for Pancreatic Cancer is now commercially available through Tempus for clinical use. PurIST is a novel RNA-expression test that identifies patients with the classical subtype of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) who are likely to experience longer overall survival (OS) with standard-of-care (SOC) FOLFIRINOX than patients with the basal subtype of PDAC.

Pancreatic cancer has one of the highest mortality rates among all major cancers, and there has been limited availability of validated diagnostics tests or biomarkers to guide first-line treatment selection.

“The PurIST test represents a breakthrough for pancreatic cancer molecular testing,” said Mike Milburn, President and CEO of GeneCentric Therapeutics. “By delineating patients into biological subtypes with clear prognostic implications, patients and healthcare providers have a new tool to better inform personalized treatment options for this devastating disease.”

As part of its ongoing collaboration with GeneCentric, Tempus validated PurIST as a laboratory developed test (LDT) as part of its Whole Transcriptome RNA sequencing platform offerings for clinical and investigational use. Clinical utility of the test was demonstrated by leveraging a Tempus real-world multimodal dataset of over 250 advanced PDAC patients who were previously treated with SOC FOLFIRINOX or gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel. RNA sequencing (RNAseq) was performed on primary or metastatic tumor tissue, which identified each patient’s cancer as either basal or classical molecular subtype. For FOLFIRINOX-treated patients, those with a classical molecular subtype had extended survival compared to those with basal molecular subtype. Survival was similar for FOLFIRINOX and gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel treatment regimens in basal patients, but classical patients had extended survival when treated with FOLFIRINOX.