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LONDON (Alliance News) - ANGLE PLC said Tuesday that it has signed a research agreement with the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Centre at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia to investigate the clinical use of the Parsortix system in metastatic breast cancer patients.
The specialist medtech company said the research collaboration will be led by Dr Massimo Cristofanilli, director of the Jefferson Breast Care Centre at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Centre and Thomas Jefferson University and Hospitals.
"Dr Cristofanilli and his team are particularly interested in ANGLE's Parsortix system for CTCs because it is antibody independent and offers easy harvesting of CTCs for molecular analysis, which may help guide treatment plans," said ANGLE in a statement Tuesday.
Initially Dr Cristofanilli and his team will be undertaking a pilot study of 40 patients with metastatic breast cancer, with three key objectives. These objectives are to run in parallel blood samples in the existing in-market system and in the Parsortix system in order to compare the number and type of CTCs obtained with both systems, assessing whether the Parsortix system is able to capture cells of clinical relevance, such as mesenchymal cells, not captured by the existing in-market system; to compare results from the Parsortix system obtained at Jefferson with results from paired samples processed at ANGLE's Philadelphia laboratories to assess reproducibility and concordance; and to characterise CTCs harvested from metastatic breast cancer patients by the Parsortix system at the DNA level.
The agreement follows a spate of research deals signed by the AIM-listed company as it works to establish the Parsortix system in clinical practice.
On September 18 ANGLE signed a collaboration agreement with the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Southern California under which the pair will investigate the clinical use of the Parsortix cell separation system for breast cancer. A day earlier the company signed a collaboration agreement with Ludwig Boltzmann Cluster 'Translational Oncology,' located at the Medical University of Vienna, to investigate the clinical use of the Parsortix system for ovarian cancer.
Shares in ANGLE were Tuesday morning trading 0.05% higher at 95.05 pence per share.
By Alice Attwood; aliceattwood@alliancenews.com; @AliceAtAlliance
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