Board change - appointment of new Chairman

Angle PLC

22 May 2023

 

For immediate release

22 May 2023

ANGLE plc ("the Company")

BOARD CHANGES - APPOINTMENT OF NEW CHAIRMAN

ANGLE plc (AIM: AGL; OTCQX: ANPCY), a world-leading liquid biopsy company announces that Garth Selvey has informed the Board of his intention to retire and leave ANGLE at the publication of the 2023 Interims in September. Garth will hand over the Chair with immediate effect to Dr. Jan Groen, currently an independent Non-executive Director on the Board.

Garth joined ANGLE as a Non-executive Director in 2006 and became Chairman in 2007. Under his guidance, ANGLE has made significant progress in the development of its ground-breaking Parsortix^® liquid biopsy system from its early adoption by leading cancer centres for oncology research through to its FDA clearance for use in metastatic breast cancer in May last year.

Dr. Jan Groen has over twenty years of experience in medical diagnostics covering both pharma and clinical sales, which provides critical market insight as ANGLE drives forward its commercial product roll-out and the expansion of its clinical laboratories and CTC services. Jan joined the ANGLE Board as a Non-executive Director in November 2018.  Jan is currently the CEO and Chairman at Intravacc B.V. and was previously the CEO of MDxHealth, a Euronext listed genomic diagnostics company specialising in prostate cancer, and President and COO of Agendia, a company specialising in breast cancer.  Jan's appointment as Chairman follows the new Non-executive Director appointments of Juliet Thompson and Dr. Joseph Eid earlier this year.

ANGLE Founder and Chief Executive, Andrew Newland, commented:

"I would like to thank Garth for his exceptional contribution to the ANGLE journey. His support and guidance has been gratefully received, especially during pivotal moments in the Company's development. He leaves ANGLE in a strong position to capitalise on its FDA product clearance and experiencing good momentum in both its product and services businesses. I am delighted that Jan has agreed to step into the Chairman role and look forward to his continued assistance in realising ANGLE's commercial potential."

For further information:

ANGLE plc	[phone]
Andrew Newland, Chief Executive Ian Griffiths, Finance Director Andrew Holder, Head of Investor Relations
Berenberg (NOMAD and Joint Broker) Toby Flaux, Ciaran Walsh, Milo Bonser	[phone]
Jefferies (Joint Broker) Thomas Bective, Shaam Vora	[phone]
FTI Consulting Simon Conway, Ciara Martin Matthew Ventimiglia (US)	[phone] [phone]

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the EU Market Abuse Regulation (596/2014). Upon the publication of this announcement via a regulatory information service, this information is considered to be in the public domain.

For Frequently Used Terms, please see the Company's website on https://angleplc.com/investor-relations/glossary/

Notes for editors

About ANGLE plc www.angleplc.com 

ANGLE is a world leading liquid biopsy company with sample-to-answer solutions. ANGLE's proven patent protected circulating tumor cell (CTC) harvesting technology is known as the Parsortix^® system.

ANGLE's Parsortix^® system is FDA cleared for its intended use in metastatic breast cancer and is currently the first and only FDA cleared medical device to harvest intact circulating cancer cells from blood.

Intended use

The Parsortix^® PC1 system is an in vitro diagnostic device intended to enrich circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from peripheral blood collected in K₂EDTA tubes from patients diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer.  The system employs a microfluidic chamber (a Parsortix cell separation cassette) to capture cells of a certain size and deformability from the population of cells present in blood.  The cells retained in the cassette are harvested by the Parsortix PC1 system for use in subsequent downstream assays.  The end user is responsible for the validation of any downstream assay.  The standalone device, as indicated, does not identify, enumerate or characterize CTCs and cannot be used to make any diagnostic/prognostic claims for CTCs, including monitoring indications or as an aid in any disease management and/or treatment decisions.

The Parsortix system enables a liquid biopsy (a simple blood test) to be used to provide the circulating metastatic breast cancer cells to the user in a format suitable for multiple types of downstream analyses.  The system is based on a microfluidic device that captures cells based on a combination of their size and compressibility.  The system is epitope independent and can capture all phenotypes of CTCs (epithelial, mesenchymal and EMTing CTCs) as well as CTC clusters in a viable form (alive).  CTCs harvested from the system enable a complete picture of a cancer to be seen; as being an intact cell they allow DNA, RNA and protein analysis as well as cytological and morphological examination and may provide comparable analysis to a tissue biopsy in metastatic breast cancer. Because CTC analysis is a non-invasive process, unlike tissue biopsy, it can be repeated as often as needed. This is important because cancer develops and changes over time and there is a clear medical need for up-to-date information on the status of a patient's tumor. In addition, the live CTCs harvested by the Parsortix system can be cultured, which offers the potential for testing tumor response to drugs outside the patient.

The Parsortix technology is the subject of 26 granted patents in Europe, the United States, China, Australia, Canada, India, Japan and Mexico with three extensive families of patents are being progressed worldwide.

In the United States, the Parsortix^® PC1 system has received a Class II Classification from FDA for use with metastatic breast cancer patients. FDA clearance is seen as the global gold standard. ANGLE's Parsortix system is the first ever FDA cleared system for harvesting CTCs for subsequent analysis. ANGLE has applied the IVD CE Mark to the same system for the same intended use in Europe.

ANGLE has also completed three separate 200 subject clinical studies under a programme designed to develop an ovarian cancer pelvic mass triage test, with the results showing best in class accuracy (AUC-ROC) of 95.4% with sensitivity of 90% and specificity of 93%. This excellent clinical result demonstrates the utility of cells harvested by the Parsortix system, which the Company believes is the "best sample" for liquid biopsy analysis as it recovers intact, living cancer cells that are involved in the progression of the disease providing prospective information.

ANGLE has established formal collaborations with world-class cancer centres and major corporates such as Abbott, Philips and QIAGEN, and works closely with leading CTC translational research customers. These Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) are working to identify applications with medical utility (clear benefit to patients), and to secure clinical data that demonstrates that utility in patient studies. The body of evidence as to the benefits of the Parsortix system is growing rapidly from our own clinical studies in metastatic breast cancer and ovarian cancer and also from KOLs with 79 peer-reviewed publications and numerous publicly available posters from 35 independent cancer centres, available on our website.

ANGLE has established clinical services laboratories in the UK and the United States to accelerate commercialisation of the Parsortix system and act as demonstrators to support product development. The laboratories offer services globally to pharmaceutical and biotech customers for use of Parsortix in cancer drug trials and, once the laboratories are accredited and tests validated, will provide Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs) for patient management.

 

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