Angle agrees pharma services contract with new customer

Liquid biopsy company Angle has agreed a pharma services contract with another new customer, it announced on Wednesday, for its recently-established pharma services business.

The AIM-traded firm said it was selected to develop immunofluorescence (IF) assays using its ‘Parsortix’ system, to detect two specific protein markers expressed by circulating tumour cells (CTCs), and implicated in DNA damage repair (DDR), which is an increasing area of focus for oncology drug development.

It described the new customer as a “well-funded” clinical stage development company, with established commercialisation agreements with multiple global pharma companies.

As part of the contract, Angle said it would develop the two assays to detect the target proteins in four hard-to-treat cancers, being triple negative breast cancer, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer and pancreatic cancer.

The assays would be developed in Angle’s UK research and development facility, before being validated in the company’s clinical laboratories.

Angle said the first phase of work agreed covered the initial assay development and validation contract, generating revenues of around $0.4m over a 12-month period.

Assuming a successful outcome, the customer expected the assays to be used in a clinical trial with study sites in the United States and Europe, planned to start in the second half of 2022.

The clinical trial phase would incorporate longitudinal analysis of patient samples, such as before, during and after treatment with the investigational drug, and was expected to generate further significant revenues for the company.

It said the same customer also had other separate assay development projects, which it was discussing with Angle.

“We are delighted to have secured our first assay development contract so soon after launching this service,” said founder and chief executive officer Andrew Newland.

“Research by leading cancer centres has demonstrated the utility of the Parsortix platform in detecting novel drug targets expressed by CTCs and this contract to develop assays against new targets of interest provides further endorsement of our technology.”

Newland said DNA damage repair was a “growing area of interest” in new drug development and assay development.

“The new assays will provide an important addition to our pharma services menu alongside our existing capabilities in PD-L1 for immunotherapy.”

At 1447 BST, shares in Angle were up 5.35% at 113.25p.