Clarient, a GE Healthcare company, and HistoRxR have signed a definitive agreement to provide pharma services using AQUA technology to their growing lists of pharma clients.  By implementing HistoRx's AQUA technology in Clarient's CLIA laboratory, the two companies will apply their complementary capabilities to serve pharma companies' growing need for biomarker analysis in clinical trials.  Use of tissue biomarkers to characterize a patient's tumor is becoming a crucial element of personalized cancer care.

AQUA technology is an automated, quantitative IHC testing method that enables standardized precision measurement of protein biomarkers in tissue as an aid to a pathologist's diagnosis.

"HistoRx has helped numerous pharma clients with key development-phase decisions in the preclinical and translational medicine areas, harnessing the power of protein biomarkers to advance drug development," said Dick Carroll, Ph.D., vice president of clinical research. "Now that AQUA technology is sought by drug developers for clinical trial support, raising the prospect of launching companion diagnostics based on these studies, expanding the network to include a commercial lab like Clarient gives more choices to study sponsors."