Oxford BioDynamics awarded $0.91m US PACT grant

Oxford BioDynamics has been awarded an FNIH Partnership for Accelerating Cancer Therapies (PACT) grant, it announced on Tuesday, to use its ‘EpiSwitch’ diagnostic platform for the accurate prediction of a patient's response to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) from a routine blood sample.

The AIM-traded firm said the grant, worth $0.91m, was executed by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH), a US not-for-profit organisation managing the precompetitive collaboration between the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and pharmaceutical companies including AbbVie, Amgen, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Celgene, Genentech/Roche, Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Novartis (NIBR), Sanofi, and Pfizer, as part of the ‘Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot’ initiative accelerating cancer research.

PACT was seeking to provide a systematic approach to cancer biomarker investigation in clinical trials, by supporting the development of standardised assays.

The company said the two-year grant would fund extended application of its technology to the analysis of primary and acquired resistance to ICI in several trials, including over 186 longitudinal samples from an observational trial, encompassing at least four separate ICI therapies and seven common cancer types.

It said the project would further validate the first-generation immune health assay for predicting response as well as monitoring resistance to ICI monotherapies, and would also evaluate key differences in predictive profiles of the patients treated with a combination therapy of ICI and an epigenetic drug.

In awarding the PACT grant, the reviewers highlighted the strengths of Oxford’s success in applying the EpiSwitch platform for biomarker discovery, the prior experience of its team, the clinical practicality of non-invasive EpiSwitch testing from blood, and the high relevance of the 3D genomic epigenetic modality.

“The recognition of the EpiSwitch platform by the consortium of US federal agencies and top pharmaceutical stakeholders marks another significant validation of OBD's ability via 3D genomics technology to address the clinical challenges of personalized medicine, cancer treatment and immune health,” said chief executive officer Dr Jon Burrows.

At 1153 BST, shares in Oxford BioDynamics were down 1.01% at 49p.