Cancer Research UK Contract

RNS Number : 2317Z

Angle PLC

25 May 2016

 

ANGLE plc ("the Company")

CANCER RESEARCH UK MANCHESTER INSTITUTE ADOPTS PARSORTIX FOR ROUTINE USE WITHIN CLINICAL TRIALS PORTFOLIO

Parsortix system already in 10 current clinical trials with a further 4 clinical trials at planning stage

ANGLE plc (AIM:AGL OTCQX:ANPCY), the specialist medtech company, is delighted to announce that it has signed a contract with The University of Manchester, acting in this instance, through the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute which will allow incorporation of ANGLE's Parsortix system in the Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology group for routine use in clinical trials and for research purposes.

The contract also provides for the continuation of the Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology group's work on the development and validation of new protocols demonstrating the system's utility for various applications in a variety of cancer types thereby enhancing the customer offering.

Utilisation of the Parsortix system in clinical drug trials is a key part of ANGLE's strategy for commercialising Parsortix.  Work by the Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology group to integrate the Parsortix system into clinical trial work flows will be key to ensuring wider adoption into a wide range of clinical trials.

As a result of the Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology group's successful evaluation of pre-clinical samples with the Parsortix system since 2012 and the strength of the technical and clinical data generated, Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology is now routinely using Parsortix as an epitope-independent technology for circulating tumour cell (CTC) capture and harvest.

The Parsortix system is currently being utilised by Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology in 10 clinical trials with an additional 4 trials in the planning stage.  As a consequence of this inclusion, over 700 clinical samples have been processed and banked using established methods developed and published by the Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology group. 

The Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology group believes that the ability to bank samples following a simple and rapid CTC enrichment using Parsortix is extremely valuable since it allows great flexibility for subsequent cellular and molecular analysis of selected samples.  They believe that this approach has the potential to provide significant clinical insight across a range of cancer types and will contribute to a hugely valuable dataset.

The Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute is part of the Manchester Cancer Research Centre (MCRC) which is a partnership founded by The University of Manchester, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust and Cancer Research UK. The MCRC brings together the expertise, ambition and resources of its partner organisations in the fields of cancer treatment and clinical research and provides outstanding facilities where researchers and clinicians can work closely together. The aim of the MCRC is to improve understanding of how cancer develops, in order to translate basic and clinical research into new diagnostic tests and treatments that benefit cancer patients. 

The Christie is one of the largest single-site cancer hospitals in Europe treating more than 44,000 patients per annum. The hospital has one of the largest clinical trial portfolios in the UK, with more than 620 active clinical trials over the full range of adult and teenage cancers.  Typically, patients will be considered for clinical trials where they are no longer responding to standard therapies. A liquid biopsy using Parsortix has the potential to determine which clinical trials might be appropriate for a given patient.

Ged Brady, Deputy and Genomics Leader within the Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology group at the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute, commented:

"Having worked on the development of the Parsortix system over the last four years, we are now delighted to be incorporating the Parsortix system into our laboratory for routine use as an epitope-independent CTC harvesting system applied to clinical samples.  Results so far are encouraging and our ambition is to evaluate the output from Parsortix sample harvesting to establish data that can be used to benefit cancer patients." 

ANGLE Founder and Chief Executive, Andrew Newland, commented:

"This contract meets a key milestone for ANGLE to get the Parsortix system adopted in routine use for clinical trials by the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute.  This will not only generate ongoing revenues for the Company but also act as a key reference for other clinical trial customers."

For further information:

ANGLE plc	01483 685830
Andrew Newland, Chief Executive Ian Griffiths, Finance Director
Cenkos Securities Stephen Keys, Dr Christopher Golden (Nominated adviser) Russell Kerr, Olly Baxendale (Sales)	020 7397 8900
FTI Consulting Simon Conway, Mo Noonan, Stephanie Cuthbert Kimberley Ha (US)	020 3727 1000 001 212 850 5612

For Frequently Used Terms, please see the Company's website on http://www.angleplc.com/the-parsortix-system/glossary/

Notes for editors

About ANGLE plc     www.angleplc.com 

ANGLE is a specialist medtech company commercialising a disruptive platform technology that can capture cells circulating in blood, such as cancer cells, even when they are as rare in number as one cell in one billion blood cells, and harvest the cells for analysis.

ANGLE's cell separation technology is called the Parsortix^TM system and it enables a liquid biopsy (simple blood test) to be used to provide the cells of interest. Parsortix is the subject of granted patents in Europe, the United States, Canada, China and Australia and three extensive families of patents are being progressed worldwide. The system is based on a microfluidic device that captures live cells based on a combination of their size and compressibility. Parsortix has a CE Mark for Europe and FDA authorisation is in process for the United States. 

ANGLE has established formal collaborations with world-class cancer centres.  These Key Opinion Leaders are working to identify applications with medical utility (clear benefit to patients), and to secure clinical data that demonstrates that utility in patient studies.  Details are available here http://www.angleplc.com/the-company/collaborators/ 

The analysis of the cells that can be harvested from patient blood with ANGLE's Parsortix system has the potential to help deliver personalised cancer care offering profound improvements in clinical and health economic outcomes in the treatment and diagnosis of various forms of cancer.

The global increase in cancer to a 1 in 3 lifetime incidence is set to drive a multi-billion dollar clinical market. The Parsortix system is designed to be compatible with existing major medtech analytical platforms and to act as a companion diagnostic for major pharma in helping to identify patients that will benefit from a particular drug and then monitoring the drug's effectiveness.

As well as cancer, the Parsortix technology has the potential for deployment with several other important cell types in the future.

ANGLE stock trades on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol AGL and in New York on the OTC-QX under the ticker symbol ANPCY. For further information please visit: www.angleplc.com

 

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