A Medical Device Daily

Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (LabCorp; Burlington, North Carolina) and ARCA Discovery (Denver), a privately-held biopharmaceutical company developing genetically targeted therapies for heart failure and other cardiovascular diseases, reported a collaboration to develop a genetic test to aid in prescribing bucindolol, a genetically targeted heart failure drug in development by ARCA.

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

More than 400,000 new cases of heart failure are diagnosed each year in the U.S. With this agreement, LabCorp and ARCA said they are closer to bringing personalized medicine to patients suffering from heart failure and other forms of heart disease.

The new test identifies common genetic variations of the alpha-2c and the beta-1 adrenergic receptors that regulate the human heart, the companies said.