Little Boy with Leukemia
A little boy with cancer and leukemia is sick and undergoing chemotherapy and radiation at the hospital.

RPRD (Right Person Right Drug) Diagnostics said today its diagnostic platform will be used by Children’s Minnesota in a collaboration designed to advance pharmacogenomic testing.

Under the collaboration, the value of which was not disclosed, Children’s Minnesota will use RPRD’s platform within the pediatric health system’s cancer and blood disorder clinic, as well as within its neurology-psychology practice.

Clinical specialists at the genomic medicine program of Children’s Minnesota will work closely with RPRD to develop a pharmacogenomic testing process designed to make care more precise and more affordable at the health system.

“We appreciate that Children’s Minnesota sees the value in our comprehensive test panels,” Ulrich Broeckel, M.D., RPRD’s founder and CEO, said in a statement. “Historically, the application of pharmacogenetics has been limited by the high cost and limited scope of available tests—two barriers that RPRD Diagnostics has overcome.”

Milwaukee-based RPRD, which was spun out of the Medical College of Wisconsin in October, offers health care providers comprehensive pharmacogenomic testing and analysis services designed to advance precision medicine in routine clinical practice.

RPRD’s flagship service, Pharmacoscan, includes genomic testing and clinical analysis across thousands of actionable gene variants, at prices the company says are competitive with single-gene tests. The platform was developed by Affymetrix, which was acquired for $1.3 billion by Thermo Fisher Scientific in a deal completed in March 2016.

RPRD also offers custom genotyping panels tailored to the specialties of healthcare providers, and works to develop new tests for novel gene variants—efforts that begin as research projects, and can evolve into routine tests or panels.

“We are currently establishing early-access partnerships with hospitals, clinical centers, and other medical providers who wish to offer their clinicians and patients better decision making tools, improve outcomes, and reduce costs,” RPRD states on its website.

Added Nancy Mendelsohn, M.D., senior medical director of specialty care at Children’s Minnesota: “Collaborating with RPRD Diagnostics underscores our commitment to integrating pharmacogenomic medicine into the care of our patients, with the goal of providing better care and better outcomes.”

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