Akoya Biosciences, Inc. and NeraCare announced an exclusive agreement under which the parties will develop market opportunities for combining Akoya's PhenoImager HT platform and NeraCare's Immunoprint assay for patient stratification and therapy selection in early-stage melanoma patients. Melanoma is the leading cause of skin cancer-related deaths, with over 235,000 new diagnoses globally every year. Recent approvals of immune- and targeted therapies have greatly expanded the available treatment options for adjuvant therapy.

Moreover, a significant number of early-stage melanoma patients remain at high risk of relapse and mortality without access to such therapies. As the majority of melanoma patients are diagnosed with early stage disease, there is a critical unmet medical need to identify those at-risk patients to potentially enable earlier access to life-saving therapeutic agents. "NeraCare's Immunoprint ass has demonstrated robust clinical performance in identifying early-stage melanoma patients at high risk of relapse through multiple, independent, prospective and retrospective clinical studies.

The Immunoprint high-risk patient group has a risk of relapse comparable to those patients in later stages with approved adjuvant therapies. Therefore, the Immunoprint high-risk patients are ideally suited to potentially benefit from these therapeutic options that would usually only be administered in later stages. At this year's ASCO Annual Meeting, updated clinical data from the MELARISK-001 study in stage IB/IIA will be presented.