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LONDON (Alliance News) - ANGLE PLC on Friday said it is to partner with Barts Cancer Institute in order to examine the use of its Parsortix cell-separation system, after the lead researchers from the institute presented data recently showing how the system worked well in harvesting circulating tumour cells.
Under the collaboration, the Barts centre, based at Queen Mary University Of London, will investigate using the Parsortix system to harvest CTCs with mesenchymal properties, the viability of CTCs after their harvest via the Parsortix system and using the molecular biomarkers in the CTCs captured by the system in order to forecast prostate cancer patient outcome and response to therapies.
"This collaboration moves forward our system's application with prostate cancer patients, the most common form of cancer in men," said ANGLE Chief Executive Andrew Newland.
ANGLE also said the Barts team, which has been working with the Parsortix system since March this year, recently presented data on the system to the 2nd International Symposium on Advances in Circulating Tumour Cells, held in Crete, Greece last week.
It found Parsortix worked well in harvesting the CTCs, managing to harvest CTCs from 100% of patients for analysis. It also found the system captured a similar number of CTCs to a leading, antibody-based CTC system.
The team also said Parsortix captured a high purity of CTCs in the tests, whereas antibody-based systems have a low purity of CTCs with a high level of white blood cells. They also said the Parsortix CTC harvest was well-suited for downstream molecular analysis.
ANGLE shares were boosted by the news, up 1.3% to 81.00 pence.
By Sam Unsted; samunsted@alliancenews.com; @SamUAtAlliance
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