MD Anderson Collaboration

RNS Number : 9429E

Angle PLC

16 February 2015

 

For immediate release

16 February 2015

ANGLE plc

("ANGLE" or "the Company")

COLLABORATION WITH MD ANDERSON CANCER CENTER

ON COLORECTAL CANCER

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:

ANGLE plc	01483 685830
Andrew Newland, Chief Executive Ian Griffiths, Finance Director
Cenkos Securities Stephen Keys, Dr Christopher Golden (Nominated adviser) Russell Kerr, Oliver Baxendale (Sales)	020 7397 8900
Buchanan Mark Court, Sophie Cowles, Jane Glover	020 7466 5000

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     

ANGLE is a specialist medtech company commercialising a 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, known as the Parsortix system, harvests the cells of interest through a liquid biopsy, with the patient only experiencing a simple blood test. Parsortix is the subject of two granted US patents and three extensive families of patents being progressed worldwide. The system is based on a microfluidic device that captures cells based on a combination of their size and compressibility. The Parsortix system is established with strong positive evaluations from leading cancer research centres and is working with these cancer centres to demonstrate key applications. Parsortix has a CE Mark for Europe and FDA authorisation is in process for the US.

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 Parsortix system is designed to be compatible with existing major medtech analytical platforms and to act as a companion diagnostic for major pharmaceutical companies in helping to identify patients that will benefit from a particular drug and then monitoring the drug's effectiveness.

ANGLE has established formal collaborations with world-class cancer centres and is working with these cancer centres to demonstrate key applications for its Parsortix non-invasive cancer diagnostic system as a liquid biopsy.  Details are available here http://www.angleplc.com/the-company/collaborators/

In addition to cancer, the Parsortix technology has the potential for deployment with several other important cell types in the future.

ANGLE began trading on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange in March 2004 under the ticker symbol AGL. For more information visit www.angleplc.com.

 

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