Ventana Medical Systems, Inc. Presents at Xconomy Forum: Boston Biotech Seizes the Momentum, Apr-04-2013 04:30 PM. Venue: Biogen Idec - Building 8, 14-15 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142, United States. Speakers: Mara G. Aspinall, President.

Ventana Medical Systems Inc. and Biocare Medical, LLC announced that they have entered into a non-exclusive license agreement to allow Biocare access to certain patents and materials related to p63 diagnostics in the research and IVD field. Financial terms of the license and settlement were not disclosed.

MolecularMD Corp. has formed a collaborative research agreement with Ventana Medical Systems, Inc., in support of the PTEN (phosphatase and tensin homolog) study, building upon the ongoing link between research and diagnostic development. The PTEN gene is a major positive and negative regulator, respectively, of the PI3-kinase pathway, which regulates growth, survival, and proliferation. This key signaling component is one of the most frequently mutated proteins in human cancers, resulting in unregulated activation of PI3K signaling and providing irrefutable genetic evidence of the central role of this pathway in tumor growth. The objective of this study is to determine the correlation between methods for detecting PTEN gene copy number and protein biomarker expression using in-situ hybridization (ISH) methods for gene detection, PTEN Sanger Sequencing for mutational analysis and immunohistochemistry (IHC) methods for protein staining. Brightfield ISH and Sanger Sequencing methods will be compared for detecting gene copy number. These ISH results will be compared to the levels of expression of the PTEN protein detected by immunohistochemistry. The expected result will be an understanding of the analytical validity of Brightfield ISH methods, compared to Sanger Sequencing, and IHC methods for determination of PTEN status.