GUILDFORD, England,
Feb. 16, 2015 /PRNewswire/
-- ANGLE plc (AIM:AGL and OTCQX:ANPCY), the specialist medtech
company, is delighted to announce a collaboration with the MD
Anderson Cancer Center to investigate the clinical use of ANGLE's
Parsortix system as a companion diagnostic in colorectal
cancer.
The University of Texas MD Anderson
Cancer Center is one of the world's most respected centres devoted
exclusively to cancer patient care, research, education and
prevention. MD Anderson was created in 1941 as part of The
University of Texas System. United
States News & World Report's "Best Hospitals" survey has ranked
MD Anderson as one of the nation's top two cancer centres every
year since the survey began in 1990. MD Anderson's Clinical Center
for Targeted Therapy is the largest programme in the world
expediting the development of new cancer drugs.
The research collaboration is being led by Drs.
Mien-Chie Hung, Vice President for
Basic Research, and Chairman of the Department of Molecular and
Cellular Oncology, Scott Kopetz,
Associate Professor, GI Medical Oncology and Shulin Li, Professor, Pediatrics, The
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer
Center.
MD Anderson will recruit 50 metastatic colorectal cancer
patients for the patient study, which is expected to report by the
end of the year. Blood will be collected from each patient
and processed using ANGLE's Parsortix system. The harvested
circulating tumour cells (CTCs) will be distributed to three
different MD Anderson labs in pursuit of three key objectives:
- Investigation of key markers on the CTCs, which may act as a
companion diagnostic to indicate which patients will benefit from
the Merck Serono's FDA approved drug Erbitux (Cetuximab). A
successful outcome may lead to the use of a Parsortix blood test to
help guide the treatment regime to be offered to colorectal cancer
patients.
- Investigating the number of CTCs that have been through the EMT
(epithelial mesenchymal transition) phase and are involved in the
process of metastasis. Such mesenchymal CTCs cannot be effectively
detected by antibody systems and the capability of the Parsortix
system to harvest these CTCs for analysis may yield important
clinical information on the process of metastasis leading to
secondary cancers.
- Investigation of the potential to develop the capability to
culture colorectal cancer CTCs harvested by the Parsortix system to
provide a population of the patient's cancer cells outside the
patient for investigation, for example for chemosensitivity
testing.
ANGLE is strongly focused on establishing the use of the
Parsortix system in clinical practice. To achieve this, a top
priority is the establishment of collaborations with key opinion
leaders at world class translational research centres. These
key opinion leaders are working to identify clinical applications
with medical utility (clear benefit to patients), and to obtain
clinical data that demonstrates that utility in patient
studies. ANGLE believes this is the optimal approach for
unlocking the multi-billion dollar worldwide market available to
the Company and its potential strategic partners. The first
such translational research patient study in ovarian cancer was
completed by Medical University of Vienna in January
2015 and reported "unprecedented sensitivity and
specificity". This is now being developed as a clinical application
for ovarian cancer.
ANGLE Founder and Chief Executive, Andrew Newland, commented:
"We are
delighted to be working with MD Anderson and Drs. Hung, Kopetz and
Li to develop clinical applications using the Parsortix system as a
companion diagnostic in the treatment of colorectal cancer
patients."
For further information please visit www.angleplc.com.
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SOURCE ANGLE plc
