Valley Medical Oncology Consultants Partners With Caris Life Sciences to Establish a Clinical Molecular Profiling Program

IRVING, Texas, June 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Valley Medical Oncology Consultants (VMOC) and Caris Life Sciences announced today a collaboration to establish a clinical molecular profiling program that enables more personalized treatment for cancer patients in the San Francisco Bay Area. This program will leverage the power of Caris Molecular Intelligence™, the industry's leading comprehensive tumor profiling service, to better target therapy options based on a patient's unique cancer biology.

By establishing a clinical molecular profiling program, VMOC will expand its ability to provide academic-quality, patient-centric cancer care conveniently close to home. The partnership with Caris includes clinical support, patient and physician education, molecular tumor boards, and system integration. The partnership also creates a forum to pursue collaborative research opportunities. 

"The expert team of physicians at Valley Medical Oncology Consultants provides world-class facilities and state-of-the-art science, ensuring our patients receive the most comprehensive, compassionate, and personalized cancer care," said Rishi Sawhney, M.D., Co-director of the Personalized Medicine Institute at Valley Medical Oncology Consultants. "Our partnership with Caris Life Sciences further enhances our ability to understand each patient's unique cancer and to provide personalized targeted treatment programs." 

In recent years, molecular profiling has become a critically valuable tool for oncologists when making therapeutic decisions for patients with difficult to treat, uncommon, and/or aggressive cancers. Caris Molecular Intelligence integrates complex molecular data generated from a patient's tumor tested at the Caris Life Sciences laboratories in Phoenix into an easy to interpret report that presents biomarker associations with therapies and/or available clinical trials. "Cancer care requires accurate, relevant and reliable profiling information for each patient. We provide our state-of-the-art molecular profiling services to both academic and community settings – where most cancer patients are treated," said David D. Halbert, Chairman and CEO of Caris Life Sciences. "We are pleased to partner with the experienced team of physicians at VMOC to further improve cancer care in the Bay Area and to help give these patients the information they need to best fight their cancer."

About Valley Medical Oncology Consultants
Valley Medical Oncology Consultants (VMOC) has been helping patients fight cancer for over 35 years.  Since its founding in 1978 by Dr. Peter Wong, the practice has grown significantly to 10 convenient locations in the San Francisco Bay area.  With an expert team of medical oncologists, hematologists, and radiation oncologists who have been trained in some of the most prestigious medical centers in the country, VMOC provides patients with world class, compassionate care by leveraging skilled experience with cutting edge technology.  VMOC is committed to providing personalized medicine while also remaining dedicated to its core values:  caring, compassion, integrity and excellence. To learn more, please visit www.vmoc.com

About Caris Life Sciences
Caris Life Sciences is a leading biosciences company focused on fulfilling the promise of precision medicine.  As the first commercial mover in comprehensive molecular profiling in oncology, Caris Molecular Intelligence™ is an industry vanguard, with more than 65,000 patients profiled. Ordered by nearly 6,000 oncologists in 59 countries, Molecular Intelligence correlates molecular data generated from a patient's tumor with biomarker/drug associations derived from clinical cancer literature. Using a variety of advanced and clinically-relevant technologies, Caris provides oncologists with the most clinically actionable information to help them personalize treatment for cancer patients. This multi-technology approach enables Caris to provide therapeutic guidance for 51 drug associations, compared to the 19 that can be found through use of next-generation sequencing alone. The company is also developing a series of blood tests based on its proprietary Carisome TOP® platform — a revolutionary blood-based testing technology for diagnosis, prognosis, and theranosis of cancer and other complex diseases. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, Caris Life Sciences offers services throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia and other international markets. To learn more, please visit www.carislifesciences.com.

SOURCE Caris Life Sciences; Valley Medical Oncology Consultants