They say you're known by the caliber of company you keep. If that's true for stocks (and it is), then CollabRx Inc. (NASDAQ:CLRX) has a lot to be proud of with its new partnership with Affymetrix, Inc. (NASDAQ:AFFX). On the flipside, Affymetrix should be honored it's inked a deal with CollabRx. In a combination that hasn't been topped since peanut butter and chocolate hooked up to form a Reese's cup, AFFX and CLRX help bring out the best in each other.
Affymetrix, Inc. is a medical diagnostics name. Specifically, AFFX is a "pioneer in microarray technology and a leader in genomics analysis, Affymetrix now develops and provides innovative technologies that enable multiplex and parallel analysis of biological systems at the cell, protein, and gene level, facilitating the rapid translation of results into biology for a better world" Translation: AFFX makes variety of high-functioning tests that can spot very specific forms of cancer.
As for CollabRx, it's aiming to "combine the power of proprietary cloud-based expert systems with insights from the nation's top clinical experts. This approach to molecular medicine provides physicians, patients and researchers with the ability to rapidly and accurately identify relevant drugs, clinical trials, diagnostics, medical tests and therapies associated with specific genetic profiles." In other words, CLRX helps caregivers and diagnostic companies make more sense out of the mountain of information that's now being created by the medical industry's ability to perform genome testing. The primary means of doing that is by leasing access to its curated website, which collects and presents that information in a concise and useful way to caregivers.
Great, but what do the two have to do with one another? Alone, each are potent game-changers in their own way. As a team, however, they can offer a product to the medical community that can't be matched by any other service or tool out there.
And that's exactly what AFFX and CLRX have done.... joined forces.
More specifically, the partnership will optimize the use of CollabRx's Genetic Variant Annotation Service in connection with Affymetrix' OncoScan FFPE Assay Kit and CytoScan Cytogenetics Suite, for the analysis of gene copy number variation in cancer research. In other words, the diagnostics guru and the informatics genius are going to enhance what the other one does by delivering a unified product to their customers.
The need and the market are certainly "there." Over the past twelve months, more than 100,000 research reports on the topic of cancer and cancer treatments have been published. Stirring the pot even further is the fact that there are over 500 new cancer therapies in development, and those drugs are part of more than 10,000 different clinical trials underway. That's on top of what we already know about cancer therapies, and on top of approved drugs that make up the current standard treatment regimen. It's mind-boggling, and it would be impossible for anyone to stay abreast of all the options a cancer patient may have. CollabRx and Affymetrix can solve that problem - and just did - in one fell swoop.
For more on CollabRx, visit its corporate website here. Or, you can read the SCN research report here, or the SCN recommendation here.
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