Angle's 'Parsortix' advantageous in breast cancer in new research

Angle announced on Monday that the University of Southern California (USC) has published peer-reviewed results of new work undertaken in metastatic breast cancer (MBC), highlighting advantages of a ‘Parsortix’ liquid biopsy, compared to standard-of-care tissue biopsy.

The AIM-traded firm said that, in addition to the known advantages of a non-invasive, repeatable, low cost procedure, the research showed that potential actionable therapeutic targets were found in the Parsortix liquid biopsy that were missed in the tissue biopsy of a single metastatic site.

It explained that the research investigated concordance between cancer cells obtained from the blood test, with CTCs harvested by Parsortix, and cancer cells obtained from the metastatic tissue biopsy, across 4,600 medically-relevant genes.

The study demonstrated that the use of single-site metastatic tumour biopsy, which is standard of care under the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) US national cancer guidelines, was unlikely to provide complete insight into tumour mutational status.

Tissue biopsy was also limited by the quality, quantity and availability of tumour tissue.

The study concluded that medically significant mutations could be found in the CTCs that are not expressed in the metastatic tissue biopsy.

A total of 51 actionable genes were identified in the CTCs, including the 39 most frequently-mutated genes in metastatic breast cancer.

Angle said the study demonstrated key capabilities of Parsortix for metastatic breast cancer, which is the area of focus for its Food and Drug Administration (FDA) submission currently in preparation, with the aim of submitting later in the current quarter.

The company said the research was published as a peer-reviewed publication in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

“This study highlights both practical advantages of the Parsortix liquid biopsy in allowing non-invasive repeat biopsies in metastatic breast cancer and technical advantages in identifying actionable therapeutic targets that may be missed when relying on a single site tissue biopsy,” said Julie Lang, associate professor at the Keck School of Medicine at USC.

Angle founder and chief executive officer Andrew Newland added that the demonstration of advanced gene expression analysis techniques on CTCs harvested by Parsortix highlighted an “important potential clinical use” of the system.

“[That use can occur] once FDA clearance for metastatic breast cancer has been secured.”

At 0957 BST, shares in Angle were down 1.79% at 55p.