Last checked at 15 Dec 2020 07:00
15 December 2020
Oncimmune Holdings plc
("Oncimmune" or the "Company")
Publication of autoantibody profiles for response prediction to Rheumatoid Arthritis treatment
Collaboration with Roche Pharmaceuticals and University Medical Center Utrecht
demonstrates the utility of autoantibodies in Methotrexate and Tocilizumab treatment selection
Oncimmune Holdings plc (AIM: ONC.L), the leading global immunodiagnostics group, is pleased to announce the publication by PLOS ONE of a study, supported by the Oncimmune's ImmunoINSIGHTS team, which analysed autoantibodies in patients with newly diagnosed Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) who were treated with either Tocilizumab or Methotrexate monotherapy. This work significantly expanded the biomarkers commonly measured in RA patients to develop a detailed picture of the immune response to the disease and its treatment.
The aim of the study was to develop a set or panel of predictive biomarkers to identify an early response in RA patients to Methotrexate or Tocilizumab, Roche's interleukin-6 (IL-6) receptor inhibitor.
The study titled 'Comprehensive exploratory autoantibody profiling in patients with early Rheumatoid Arthritis treated with Methotrexate or Tocilizumab', is available online.1
Rheumatoid Arthritis is an autoimmune disorder primarily of joints, that causes long-term damage. The current diagnostic tests measure Rheumatoid Factor, which is typically elevated in 60-90% of patients with the autoimmune condition. Successful validation of a novel autoantibody panel that is predictive of treatment response would be a major step forward in the management of this debilitating disease.
ImmunoINSIGHTS, Oncimmune's autoantibody profiling technology and service business, continues to work in partnership with therapy developers to generate, actionable, value-adding insights for their drug development programmes.
Dr Adam M Hill, CEO of Oncimmune said: "Rheumatoid Arthritis is a debilitating, chronic disease where there remains a substantial unmet need in ensuring patients receive the right disease modifying treatment as early as possible. This work, in collaboration with colleagues at Roche and UMC Utrecht, clearly demonstrates the power of our SeroTagTM autoantibody discovery platform in identifying biomarkers able to predict response to a selection of treatments for Rheumatoid Arthritis. This predictive capability presents an opportunity to develop and validate novel autoantibody panels for patient stratification in trials and the clinic."
1https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0241189
For further information:
Oncimmune Holdings plc
Adam Hill, Chief Executive Officer
Matthew Hall, Chief Financial Officer
contact@oncimmune.co.uk
Zeus Capital Limited (Nominated Adviser and Joint Broker)
Andrew Jones, Daniel Harris, Victoria Ayton
+44 (0)20 3829 5000
N+1 Singer (Joint Broker)
Aubrey Powell, Harry Gooden, Iqra Amin, James Fischer
+44 (0)20 7496 3000
WG Partners (Joint Broker)
David Wilson, Chris Lee
+44 (0)203 705 9321
Media enquiries:
FTI Consulting
Ben Atwell, Michael Trace, Alex Davis
Oncimmune@fticonsulting.com
+44 (0)20 3727 1000
About Oncimmune
Our intimate understanding of the human immune system enables us to harness its sophisticated response to disease to detect cancer earlier and to support the development of better therapies. The key to improving cancer survival is early detection and better selection for therapy. As a company, we are driven by our passion to improve cancer survival and to give people extra time.
Oncimmune is a leading immunodiagnostics developer, primarily focused on the growing fields of immuno-oncology, autoimmune disease and infectious diseases. Oncimmune has a diversified and growing revenue from its portfolio of diagnostic products to detect early-stage cancer and a contract discovery and development service-based platform, delivering actionable insights into therapies to its pharmaceutical and biotech partners.
Oncimmune's ImmunoINSIGHTS platform enables life-science organisations to optimise drug development and delivery, leading to more effective targeted as well as safer treatments for patients. Oncimmune's immunodiagnostic technology, EarlyCDT, can detect and help identify cancer on average four years earlier than standard clinical diagnosis. Our lead diagnostic test, EarlyCDT Lung, targets a vast market estimated to grow to £3.8bn by 2024. With over 200,000 tests already performed for patients worldwide and its use being supported by peer reviewed data in over 12,000 patients, we are poised to become an integral component of future lung cancer detection programmes, globally.
Oncimmune, headquartered at its laboratory facility in Nottingham, UK, has a discovery research centre in Dortmund, Germany and a partner representative office in Shanghai, China.
For more information, visit www.oncimmune.com
What is ImmunoINSIGHTS?
The ImmunoINSIGHTS service business leverages Oncimmune's technology platform and methodologies across multiple diseases, to offer life-science organisations actionable insights for therapies across the development and product lifecycle. Our core immune-profiling technology is underpinned by our library of over eight thousand immunogenic proteins, one of the largest of its kind. This helps identify trial participants and patients into clinically relevant subgroups, enabling development of targeted and more effective treatments.
What is SeroTag?
Oncimmune's proprietary biomarker discovery engine, which is leveraged in our ImmunoINSIGHTS services to discover and validate novel biomarkers can help stratify patients in multiple cancer indications and with different autoimmune diseases.
This high-throughput, multiplex technology is based on one of the largest, in-house protein libraries, as well as a unique, ever-growing repository of disease data for indications including, but not limited to, autoimmune diseases and cancer. As a result, SeroTag is helping to address and monitor a number of challenges currently hindering the successful development and broader application of both cancer immunotherapies and treatments for autoimmune diseases.
The platform is being applied to discover and validate biomarkers and develop precision diagnostic tools from minimally invasive liquid biopsies. SeroTag analyses autoantibodies-some of the most stable analytes-and is used most frequently for the identification of IgG isoforms, in addition to IgM and IgA, from just a few drops of serum.
The SeroTag platform acts as the primary discovery engine that feeds into the creation of Oncimmune's NavigAID disease-specific stratification panels-precision medicine tools which are enabling patient and disease stratification and support therapeutic development.