Saladax inks companion Dx deal with Bristol-Myers

Diagnostics firm Saladax Biomedical has expanded its partnership with Bristol-Myers Squibb ($BMY), signing a collaboration agreement to develop companion diagnostics for some of the pharma giant's future therapies.

Both companies were stingy about details, declining to disclose the financial terms of the deal and only vaguely describing its aims, saying the two firms have started developing a companion diagnostic "in an undisclosed field."

In any case, the new deal follows a 2010 partnership between Saladax and BMS, in which the two collaborated on companion Dx for the latter's Alzheimer's treatments. Saladax CEO Kevin Harter said the company is optimistic that the pair can find further success, saying in a statement that he's "eager to continue marrying the scientific and clinical knowledge of Bristol-Myers Squibb and Saladax to improve the lives of patients in other clinical areas."

The partnership is hardly an isolated occurrence in the pharma world, as more and more drugmakers realize that striking companion Dx deals helps get targeted therapies approved and prescribed. In the past couple months, Merck KgaA recruited MDxHealth to develop an assay for its pipeline brain cancer treatment, and Eli Lilly ($LLY) paired up with PrimeraDx to do the same thing for its cancer drugs.

- read Saladax's release