Our company
Founded in 2012 to turn a tumour suppressor gene discovery into diagnostic and prognostic tests.
Our company
A joint university and industry partnership
GeneAssess, Inc. was founded in 2012 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Its purpose was stated plainly: to translate research on differential susceptibility to environmental carcinogenesis into new diagnostic and prognostic tests, and therapies.
The company was built on a single discovery from the founder’s laboratory — the FRY tumour suppressor gene — and on a pending patent covering its use in cancer diagnosis, prognosis and the prediction of response to therapy.
It was, and described itself as, a partnership between a university research programme and industry: the science came out of an academic laboratory, and the company existed to carry it to a product.
What the company was for
Developing diagnostic and prognostic products based on the level of functional FRY protein expressed in cancers.
Why it mattered
Decreased FRY expression is a critical early event in carcinogenesis and correlates with the most aggressive, hardest-to-treat breast cancers.
Where the science came from
A genetic backcross in rats, a quantitative trait locus on chromosome 12, and a candidate gene conserved from fruit fly to human.
The founder
Helmut Zarbl, PhD
Founding President of GeneAssess from 2012, and the academic behind the FRY programme. Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Rutgers School of Public Health, and Director of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute.
Career, in brief
- PhD in Biochemistry, McGill University, 1983
- Postdoctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Institute, with Dr. Mariano Barbacid
- MIT from 1987; Deputy Director of its Environmental Health Sciences Center
- Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center from 1994; established and directed its Genomics facility
- Founded and directed the NIEHS-sponsored UW / FHCRC Toxicogenomics Research Consortium
- Rutgers from 2007; Associate Director of the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, 2008–2013
- Co-founder of Impedagen, LLC, 2006
The record
Public funding behind the programme
From the founder’s own curriculum vitae. These awards funded the work, alongside the company’s own service contract.
2013–2017
GeneAssess, Inc. Service Contract
Analysis of FRY gene expression and mutation as biomarkers of breast and prostate cancer progression.
2014–2019 · $1,832,850
NIH / NCI R01
Epigenetic Silencing of the FRY Carcinoma Susceptibility Gene in Breast Cancer.
2013–2015 · $300,000
DoD Breast Cancer Breakthrough Award
Tumour Suppressor FRY Gene, Tumour Aggressiveness, and Racial Differences in Breast Cancer. Co-principal investigator with Xuefeng Ren, University at Buffalo.