GUILDFORD, United Kingdom,
June 11, 2015 /PRNewswire/
-- ANGLE plc (AIM: AGL OTCQX: ANPCY), the specialist medtech
company, is delighted to announce new results from its key opinion
leader, Barts Cancer Institute (BCI), investigating the clinical
use of the Parsortix system in prostate cancer patients.
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men and the
fourth most common overall. More than 1.1 million cases of prostate
cancer were recorded in 2012, accounting for around 8 per cent of
all new cancer cases and 15 per cent in men (Source: World Cancer
Research Fund International).
BCI, part of Queen Mary University of London's School of Medicine & Dentistry,
is home to world-class clinical, translational and basic
scientific research and is one of the top five cancer research
centres in the UK. BCI is publishing the results of the most recent
phase of its work at a symposium hosted by the British Association
for Cancer Research and Cancer Research UK on "Evolution and
Intratumoural Heterogeneity" being held today at the Royal Society
of Medicine, London. A copy of the poster publication is
available on the ANGLE website here
http://www.angleplc.com/the-parsortix-system/download-files/.
The results published today come from an initial study of 52
prostate cancer patient samples of which 44 were with metastatic
and 8 were with localised diseases.
Using the Parsortix system, BCI researchers were able to
successfully harvest CTCs from 100% of the patients. The
Parsortix system harvested a range of different circulating cells
comprising not only CK+ cells (epithelial cells), which can be
captured using traditional antibody-based capture systems, but also
CK- Vimentin+ cells (mesenchymal cells). The latter are known
to play a crucial role in the process of cancer metastasis, which
leads to secondary cancers - the most common cause of death from
cancer - and cannot be captured using traditional antibody-based
systems.
Although it has limitations in detecting cancer, for patients
known to have prostate cancer, prostate-specific antigen (PSA)
levels in the blood are widely used as a clinical marker to assess
cancer progression. The number of mesenchymal cells harvested by
the Parsortix system correlated much more strongly with PSA levels
than the epithelial cells. BCI is the first group to
demonstrate the correlation between mesenchymal cells and PSA
levels in prostate cancer patients. This breakthrough
research suggests that the cells harvested by the Parsortix system
are clinically relevant and offers the potential for the Parsortix
system to be used to provide a repeatable, non-invasive liquid
biopsy for prostate cancer patients.
BCI researchers are continuing to expand the work undertaken
with more patient numbers and with ongoing follow-up of the
patients studied so far. In addition they are
investigating:
- the viability of CTCs after their harvest from the Parsortix
system and the potential to culture them. Culturing CTCs could
provide a way to test the likely effectiveness of a proposed
treatment before administering the patient with a given drug
- the molecular biomarkers in the CTCs harvested by the Parsortix
system to predict prostate cancer patient outcome and response to
therapies.
Dr Yong-Jie Lu, Reader in
Medical Oncology at Barts Cancer Institute, commented:
"This work has confirmed the ability of the Parsortix system to
harvest clinically relevant mesenchymal cells and that these cells
correlate with the patient PSA level, the current gold standard for
assessing whether the patient's prostate cancer is
progressing. We are looking forward to the next stage of the
work investigating molecular biomarkers on the harvested cells and
hope that this may help guide effective treatment for prostate
cancer patients in the future."
ANGLE Founder and Chief Executive, Andrew Newland, commented:
"The prospect
of deployment of our repeatable, non-invasive liquid biopsy in the
treatment of prostate cancer patients in therapy selection and
remission monitoring is exciting. These findings are
encouraging and we look forward to further developments as soon as
possible."
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For further
information:
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www.angleplc.com
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SOURCE ANGLE plc