BIOC Biocept Inc

SAN DIEGO, March 26, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Biocept, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIOC), a leading commercial provider of liquid biopsy tests designed to provide physicians with clinically actionable information to improve the outcomes of patients diagnosed with cancer, announces that it will begin commercializing its recently expanded pathology partnership platform, EmpowerTC, to urology and uropathology practices. Biocept has expanded the capability of EmpowerTC to perform biomarker tests that can aid physicians and pathologists in the management of patients diagnosed with prostate cancer. Such tests include the androgen receptor splice variant, AR-V7, PTEN, and other cancer biomarker tests, which can help physicians determine treatment pathways and provide prognostic information with regards to aggressiveness of disease.

"The new uro-oncology biomarkers included in Biocept's EmpowerTC service enables my pathology team to use cutting-edge liquid biopsy technologies, which can be useful in our practice when making treatment decisions for our patients with prostate cancer," said Michael P. Zahalsky, MD, Founder and President of Z Urology in Coral Springs, Florida. "Liquid biopsy testing is becoming an important tool for personalizing cancer treatment, and we look forward to utilizing EmpowerTC to harness predictive and prognostic biomarker information from a simple blood sample."

"We are excited to expand our commercial offering into the urology market segment with the new biomarkers incorporated into our EmpowerTC service," said Michael Nall, President and CEO of Biocept. "We believe that our pathology partnership platform offers urologists and uro-pathologists a unique solution to evaluate and treat their patients diagnosed with prostate cancer, which further distinguishes Biocept from other commercial liquid biopsy services."

About Liquid Biopsy Biomarker Detection for Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer is a leading cause of cancer death in the United States with 31,620 deaths and 174,650 new cases estimated for 2019.¹ The disease is diagnosed from pathologic evaluation (Gleason score) of needle-based tissue biopsies, and biopsy tissue is used to determine prognosis and guide treatment. However, prostate cancer is a multifocal disease and a needle biopsy often misses a potentially relevant tumor; there can also be significant variation within pathologic evaluation of a specific tumor.^2,3 Liquid-based biopsy biomarker detection may address tumor heterogeneity and enable more-informed prognosis.

Patients who present with advanced disease typically receive chemical castration with androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) or surgical castration as initial treatment to reduce androgen-driven tumor growth. However, most prostate cancer patients acquire resistance to the initial treatment, thus progressing to a castration-resistant disease state.⁴ Prognostic markers can help suggest the patient's overall outcome, such as the probability of biochemical recurrence or metastasis, and prognostic markers may be useful to guide patient management. Predictive markers aim to evaluate the likelihood of benefit from a specific clinical intervention.  Liquid biopsy provides the ability to assess both prognostic and predictive biomarkers such as androgen receptor (AR) overexpression, circulating tumor cell (CTC) enumeration, the genomic biomarkers PTEN, MYC, C-met, EGFR amplification and AR splice variant-7 (AR-V7), which offer promise in meeting this important medical need.

About Biocept's Pathology Partnership Offering

Biocept's EmpowerTC offering provides liquid biopsy services to pathologists, thereby extending our partners' breadth of laboratory offerings. This offering empowers pathologists to combine their skills, knowledge and experience with Biocept's patented and proprietary liquid biopsy platform technology. For more information about Biocept's EmpowerTC testing service, please contact Biocept Customer Services at 888.332.7729.

About Biocept

Biocept, Inc. is a molecular diagnostics company with commercialized assays for lung, breast, gastric, colorectal and prostate cancers, and melanoma. The Company uses its proprietary liquid biopsy technology to provide physicians with information for treating and monitoring patients diagnosed with cancer. The Company's patented Target Selector™ liquid biopsy technology platform captures and analyzes tumor-associated molecular markers in both CTCs and in plasma (ctDNA). With thousands of tests performed, the platform has demonstrated the ability to identify cancer mutations and alterations to inform physicians about a patient's disease and therapeutic options. For additional information, please visit www.biocept.com.

Forward-Looking Statements Disclaimer Statement

This release contains forward-looking statements that are based upon current expectations or beliefs, as well as a number of assumptions about future events. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements and the assumptions upon which they are based are reasonable, we can give no assurance that such expectations and assumptions will prove to have been correct. Forward-looking statements are generally identifiable by the use of words like "may," "will," "should," "could," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "believe," "intend," or "project" or the negative of these words or other variations on these words or comparable terminology. To the extent that statements in this release are not strictly historical, including without limitation statements as to our ability to improve the outcomes of patients diagnosed with cancer, the potential clinical utility of our proprietary technology platform and the utility and commercial success of our EmpowerTC offering, such statements are forward-looking, and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The reader is cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, as these statements are subject to numerous risk factors as set forth in our Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. The effects of such risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained in this release. We do not plan to update any such forward-looking statements and expressly disclaim any duty to update the information contained in this press release except as required by law. Readers are advised to review our filings with the SEC, which can be accessed over the Internet at the SEC's website located at www.sec.gov.

Contact:
LHA Investor Relations
Jody Cain
Jcain@lhai.com
310-691-7100

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SOURCE Biocept, Inc.