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LONDON (Alliance News) - Liquid biopsy company Angle PLC on Monday said it has received positive results from a study examining the use of its Parsortix system in prenatal testing.
Shares in Parsortix were up 8.4% at 42.80 pence on Monday.
Parsortix is Angle's cell separation technology that can be used as a cancer test and a prenatal test. In this pilot study it was used to collect foetal cells from the peripheral blood of pregnant women so that they could be tested for abnormalities.
The study analysed blood from 19 pregnant women processed through the Parsortix system. Large foetal cells were identified in all 19 women with none found in control cases of non-pregnant women. The cells were tested for XY chromosomes, with 42% of these testing positive, in line with the expectation of roughly half of the foetuses being male.
One of the blood tests was drawn from a woman whose foetus had been diagnosed with Down's syndrome. The foetal cells harvested using Parsortix were found to be positive for this syndrome, indicating that the test can be used as a diagnostic tool.
Parsortix differs from other types of non-invasive prenatal testing in that it can harvest intact foetal cells rather than cell-free fetal DNA - cell-free DNA being fragments of dead foetal cells. This means whole genome analysis of the foetus can be conducted, and also that Parsortix does not infringe on patents relating to cell-free DNA.
While the study was promising, Angle said, further testing will be needed to develop and effective prenatal test. The company said it is in talks with "interested parties" to secure partners for commercialising its system for non-invasive prenatal testing as it is focused on developing its established cancer projects.
Angle said the size of the non-invasive prenatal testing market was around USD600 million in 2016, and that this was forecast to increase to more than USD1.0 billion per year by 2022.
"Angle's product-based approach to liquid biopsy enables us to leverage partnerships with third parties, which we are developing in the [non-invasive prenatal testing] space, an established and fast growing large scale market," said Angle Chief Executive Andrew Newland.
