Industry Biotechnology Products Liquid biopsy Headquarters San Diego Type Privately held company | Area served Worldwide Website epicsciences.com Founded 2008 | |
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Founder Peter Kuhn, David Nelson, Dena Marrinucci, Steven French, Xing Yang, Mike Coward Key people Murali Prahalad, President and CEO | ||
Epic Sciences is a company that is developing highly sensitive diagnostic tests to molecularly characterize the circulating tumor cells (CTC) in the blood. The team at Epic has developed a powerful rare-cell detection and characterization platform, which was founded on unique technology from Dr. Peter Kuhn's lab. This technology has been exclusively licensed from The Scripps Research Institute. The technique involves analyzing all the nucleated cells in a blood sample to find CTCs and CTC subtypes and assessing them for genetic mutations and abnormal protein expression. Kuhn is also a co-founder of the company.
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Founding
Epic Sciences began formal operations in 2010. Dr. David Nelson was the first President and CEO as well as Director and co-founder. Other co-founders included Dr. Dena Marrinucci, Steven French, Dr. Xing Yang, and Mike Coward.
History
Dr. Nelson was CEO from 2010 until July 2013. During that time, the Epic team industrialized the academic technology from the Kuhn lab, established numerous academic collaborations (Memorial Sloan Kettering, Moffitt, MD Anderson, Royal Marsden, Yale etc.), received multiple grants from the National Cancer Institute, signed collaborations with over 10 pharmaceutical companies for many clinical studies including over 3000 patients, closed two rounds of private equity financing with top tier investors (Domain Associates, Roche, and Pfizer), executed a partnership with LabCorp to provide global reach, partnered with Microsoft to provide innovative and scalable computational solutions, and initiated a business strategy to pursue both independent diagnostic products as well as companion diagnostics with its pharmaceutical partners.
In January 2014, the company presented research at the Personalized Medicine World Conference that described their technique for identifying CTCs from a blood sample, and how this could allow oncologists to determine whether a patient's cancer has returned. The company also said the technique could be used to determine whether the patient's cancer is growing resistant to their current treatment regimen. In July 2014, the company appointed Gregory T. Lucier as their board chairman.