"Biomarkers give us clues about what to expect about the risk of an illness, its future course and response to treatment, including benefits and harms," commented Rob Califf, MD, Vice Chancellor for Clinical Research at Duke University Medical Center and Director of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute.

"A particularly exciting aspect of this partnership is that we will be developing deep knowledge about appropriate use of biomarkers in clinical practice and how to provide this information so that patients and doctors can make better decisions," added Andrew Conrad, Ph.D., Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of LabCorp.

The Biomarker Factory will benefit from hundreds of thousands of biological samples contributed by Duke, as well as the infrastructure already in place in the Duke-led, large-scale epidemiology study known as MURDOCK, which is currently recruiting 50,000 people into a registry. The Biomarker Factory will also capitalize on LabCorp's biorepository being developed to discover and validate biomarkers in human disease. Financial terms were not disclosed.

"The Biomarker Factory will leverage existing assets in both founding organizations and focus them in a new way to rigorously demonstrate the utility of biomarkers to stratify disease, conserve healthcare resources, and optimize health outcomes," says Victoria Christian, Chief Operating Officer of the Duke Translational Research Institute who spearheaded the enterprise.

SOURCE Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings