Angle upbeat on German research into 'Parsortix'

Liquid biopsy company Angle announced on Monday that University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf has published results of work undertaken to assess the analytical and clinical performance of ‘Parsortix’ in multiple metastatic cancer types, with the main emphasis on metastatic breast cancer.

The AIM-traded firm said the work was completed as part of the pan-European CANCER-ID consortium, funded by the European Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI), which aimed to standardise protocols and validate innovative circulating tumour cell (CTC) detection approaches for future clinical trials.

It said the results demonstrated the capability of the Parsortix system to work with multiple different cancer types, using multiple blood preservative tube types, and capturing the full range of CTCs, not just epithelial CTCs.

The researchers reportedly demonstrated that the CTCs harvested by the Parsortix system were suitable for "robust amplification of single cell DNA at excellent quality for subsequent molecular analysis".

It said that, even in metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and gastrointestinal cancer, which were known to be problematic for CTC enrichment, the Parsortix workflow harvested CTCs in 46% of patients notwithstanding treatment and disease condition.

The researchers stated in the publication that they had established optimised enrichment protocols, utilising Parsortix, which apparently ensured “robust” performance.

Angle said the research had been published as a peer-reviewed publication in the journal Cancers.

“This publication adds to the body of evidence supporting the use of Parsortix in standard practice as part of personalised cancer care,” said founder and chief executive Andrew Newland.

“Hamburg-Eppendorf is considered a leader in Europe in the field and their positive evaluation of Parsortix is an important element in supporting the potential use of Parsortix in future pharma services clinical trials.”

As it had previously announced, following the Q-submission meeting in January with US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Angle was now progressing a full De Novo FDA submission with the prospect of clearance in the third quarter of 2020.

It noted that the outcome and timing of the FDA regulatory decision was “entirely dependent” on the administration’s review and response to its submission.

At 1523 GMT, shares in Angle were flat at 72.5p.