Clarient Inc. and Health Discovery Corporation Jointly Announce Licensing Agreement

Clarient, Inc. and Health Discovery Corporation have jointly announced that they have entered into a licensing agreement in which Clarient will utilize HDC's Support Vector Machine (SVM) intellectual property (IP). 

Under the terms of the Agreement, Clarient will pay HDC an upfront licensing fee and future royalties for any Clarient product developed using the SVM technology.

This agreement will capitalize on Clarient's position as a leader in rare event detection and allow for the development of applications to detect cancer cells in peripheral blood and bone marrow. 

Circulating cells testing is being investigated as a way to allow physicians the ability to understand a patient's propensity for cancer recurrence after surgery.

Ron Andrews, Clarient's President and CEO said, "Having access to this IP portfolio will allow Clarient to accelerate its development of companion diagnostics."

"The future of cancer management relies heavily on our ability to accurately assess and characterize cancer cells.  This process will require the use of complex biomarkers to deliver on the promise of personalized medicine."

"When combined with our broad patent portfolio, the SVM technology can position Clarient as a leader in peripheral cell testing."

Stephen D. Barnhill, M.D., Chairman and CEO of Health Discovery Corporation, commented, "HDC is pleased to work with one of the leading cancer diagnostic companies in our industry, particularly in such an important area."

"This significant deal with our partners at Clarient stands as an endorsement of HDC's business model and the proven capabilities of our SVM technology."

"Clarient's heritage in cellular image analysis and rare cell detection combined with the power of our Support Vector Machine technology will enable our two companies to rapidly build on the ability to detect circulating tumor cells."

"In turn, detection of circulating tumor cells will have a dramatic effect on the management of various cancers."

"We believe that the resulting information will provide physicians with a greater understanding of patient prognosis after treatment."

Support Vector Machines are replacing neural networks in a variety of fields including engineering, information retrieval and bioinformatics. 

SVM's have received widespread notice for their ability to discover hidden relationships in complex datasets and have been exploited in numerous applications which include: image analysis, protein structure prediction, spectral analysis, medical diagnosis and prognosis, classification of microarray gene expression data, decryption, and many others.

"Our initial utility of these patents will be in the development of robust circulating tumor and endothelial cell applications," said Jose de la Torre- Bueno, Ph.D., Clarient's Chief Technology Officer.

"But we believe Support Vector Machines offer a quicker path to market for other biomarkers currently in development."

"We have developed rare event applications which can eventually aid pharmaceutical companies for use in therapeutic clinical trials."

"The addition of Support Vector Machines can advance the utility of this program as we begin to market this cutting edge test to a broader base of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies doing research in the field of cancer."

"Through our partnership with DAKO," Andrews continued, "we will work towards a fully-automated product to include cell enrichment, tissue staining and quantification via cellular image analysis."

"We believe Support Vector Machines will simplify our current technique and will speed up the development process, and we will report on the progress of this important project in future periods."