After carrying Myriad Genetics’ rheumatoid arthritis diagnostic for years at its hundreds of patient service centers, Labcorp has decided to make the test its own.
The clinical testing giant agreed to buy the rights to Myriad’s Vectra blood test, which profiles 12 proteins to measure arthritis activity including the severity of inflammation, potential joint damage and the success of given therapies.
According to Labcorp, more than 1 million of these tests have been performed over the past decade, after it was first developed and launched by Crescendo Biosciences—which Myriad itself acquired less than four years later for $270 million. Currently, “a meaningful portion of testing volume” flows through Labcorp, the company said.
The ultimate goal of the acquisition is to “make Labcorp a single-source diagnostics solution for RA providers” by adding Vectra to its other in-house testing products, Labcorp Diagnostics’ president and chief medical officer, Brian Caveney, M.D., said in a statement. This includes dozens of serum and whole-blood panels on offer for diagnosing rheumatoid arthritis, selecting treatment and monitoring the course of the disease.
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Myriad previously showed the Vectra test could help assign patients to biologic or nonbiologic drugs by predicting their responses to different therapies. The diagnostic has also been evaluated in real-world settings to see how it affects clinicians’ work-ups.
The deal is slated to close within the third quarter of this year. Financial terms were not disclosed, but coming up with the cash shouldn’t be a problem for Labcorp, which recently posted $4.2 billion in revenues for the first quarter of this year.
The results were driven in part by Labcorp’s molecular and antibody tests for COVID-19 as well as broader returning demand for non-COVID tests and new activity from biopharma companies restarting their drug development work.