Angle optimises first ever workflow to culture CTCs

AIM-quoted liquid biopsy company Angle has demonstrated a workflow for culturing circulating tumour cells using its Parsortix system.

The innovative research, undertaken by the Robert H Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Feinberg School of Medicine at Chicago's Northwestern University, has developed an optimised workflow for the recovery and culturing of CTCs from a simple blood test in order to produce an effective ex-vivo culture of the individual patient's cancer cells.

The team of investigators, led by Dr Massimo Cristofanilli, focused on demonstrating the capability to interrogate and test cancer cells collected from patients with advanced breast cancer, highlighting another major opportunity for the use of Angle's Parsortix system, assuming FDA approval is granted.

This is the first time that an optimised workflow had been presented to culture CTCs ex-vivo, a goal of many research groups for some time that had not until now been achievable.

Angle's founder and chief executive, Andrew Newland, said, "This work is highly encouraging for Angle."

"Firstly every metastatic breast sample analysed yielded a large number of CTCs, which is a positive sign for our FDA study. Secondly, Northwestern has achieved something that many other Centres before them have failed to do, which is to produce an optimised workflow for reproducibly growing the CTCs. This approach is potentially applicable for every metastatic breast cancer patient and provides another clear high-value application for ANGLE's Parsortix system," he added.

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