Columbia University Medical Center Receives Conditional Approval by the New York State Department of Health for a Custom Pillar Biosciences NGS Panel

BOSTON, May 30, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Pillar Biosciences, a clinical cancer diagnostics company based near Boston, MA, announced today that the Columbia Solid Tumor Panel, a next-generation sequencing (NGS) panel, received conditional approval by the New York State Department of Health for clinical use by the Laboratory of Personalized Genomic Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC).

The Columbia Solid Tumor Panel was designed by Dr. Helen Fernandes and colleagues at CUMC and leverages Pillar Biosciences' proprietary SLIMamp® enrichment chemistry and single-tube amplification for an easy workflow to interrogate 47 genes for variants associated with solid tumors, including most mutations labeled as companion diagnostics. Dr. Fernandes and her team have presented validation data at both domestic and international conferences demonstrating robust analytical performance, sensitive variant detection with low DNA input, and a rapid turnaround time from sample to answer.

The Columbia Solid Tumor Panel will be used at the front end of the molecular oncology testing workflow at CUMC. The panel's rapid turnaround time and low DNA input requirements accelerate identification of the most prevalent oncogenic mutations resulting in quicker diagnosis for selection of targeted therapies.

"We evaluated other solid tumor panels and found that the single-tube amplification used in this panel worked best for us in terms of workflow, assay performance, and cost," said Dr. Helen Fernandes, Co-Director of Genomic Oncology at the Laboratory of Personalized Genomic Medicine, Department of Pathology and Cell Biology at CUMC. 

"We are happy for Columbia's conditional approval," said Gang Song, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Pillar Biosciences. "Our mission is to make precision medicine accessible, and we are excited about Columbia's ability to more efficiently leverage lab resources to provide accurate diagnostics to patients with limited time for treatment determination."

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About Pillar Biosciences

Pillar Biosciences is a clinical cancer diagnostics company based near Boston, Massachusetts. We create precision NGS panels and software solutions to make clinical NGS robust, streamlined and cost-effective. Our SLIMamp®- and PiVAT®-based products are intended to deliver the most value to high-throughput reference laboratories and clinical oncology laboratories. Learn more at pillar-biosciences.com.

SOURCE Pillar Biosciences

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