The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Exosome Diagnostics are collaborating on the R&D of real-time nucleic acid-based body-fluid diagnostics to advance personalized medicine. Exosome will provide technical and development support to Mount Sinai researchers along with early access to proprietary technology products upgrades. The five-year agreement will allow the companies to establish targeted research and biomarker discovery programs in oncology and inflammation. Exosome anticipates pursuing commercial development and FDA review of successful validations for in vitro diagnostics.

Carlos Cordon-Cardo, M.D., Ph.D., chair, department of pathology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said, "Biofluid-based, point-in-time analyses will lead to an improved, patient-centric understanding of disease, thereby guiding more informed treatment decisions and response to therapy."

The agreement was negotiated by Mount Sinai Innovation Partners, which encourages the commercialization of novel research conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine. Mount Sinai plans to leverage the experience of its clinical investigators in areas of unmet medical needs to develop clinical study programs taking advantage of Exosome's technology that has the ability to extract high-quality RNA from blood, urine and cerebrospinal fluid.

Mount Sinai will retain rights to molecular biomarkers associated with disease progression and drug response, and Exosome will retain commercial development rights for molecular in vitro diagnostic products.