BRANFORD, Conn.—HistoRx recently announced the licensing of a new clinical diagnostic assay based on AQUA technology from Yale University. The assay allows physicians treating patients with melanoma to identify a subset of patients who, though they have no detectable cancer in their lymph nodes, have a 40-percent risk of disease recurrence. AQUA technology is an automated, quantitative IHC testing method that allows for measurement of protein biomarkers in tissue to aid in a pathologist’s diagnosis. The assay was developed in the lab of Dr. David Rimm, professor of pathology and director of pathology tissue services at the Yale School of Medicine.  

 

Rimm, who invented AQUA technology, noted that, “This assay allows us to measure the risk of recurrence, which can be helpful to ease patient anxiety or to prompt patients to be aggressive in follow-up or even consider adjuvant chemotherapy.”