Exact Sciences Corporation announced that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has selected the company's testing laboratory in Phoenix, AZ to participate in the ComboMATCH clinical trials, one of the NCI-funded precision medicine initiatives. As a ComboMATCH-designated lab, Exact Sciences will use its new OncoExTra? test to analyze tumor tissue and paired normal blood samples from patient participants and uncover the specific abnormalities in a patient's tumor that may be most effective to treat.

OncoExTra is a comprehensive next-generation sequencing (NGS) test that provides a comprehensive molecular picture of the patient's cancer and actionable results, matching a patient's unique cancer to a targeted therapy or clinical trial. The ComboMATCH registration trial is the gateway to a set of clinical trials evaluating new anti-cancer treatment combinations directed by NGS testing in select groups of adults and children with locally advanced or advanced (metastatic) cancer. The OncoExTra test profiles the entire exome (DNA) and the transcriptome (RNA) across approximately 20,000 genes, uncovering variants possibly missed by only evaluating DNA.

It also uses matched tumor-normal sequencing to limit potentially false positive results and allow physicians to make clinical decisions based on variants related only to the tumor. The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has updated its guidelines to recommend RNA-based fusion testing for patients with no actionable information provided by a standard DNA, multigene panel test. OncoExTra also analyzes all National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) recommended genes for patients with solid tumors and provides expertly curated, intuitive reports.