Advanced Oncotherapy demonstrates 'potential superiority' of LIGHT system

The AIM-traded firm said its findings built on research at the Mayo Clinic, which demonstrated the benefits of combining proton therapy with targeted small molecule damage repair inhibitors.

It noted that, in a study recently published in the American Association for Cancer Research's journal Cancer Research, Mayo demonstrated that cancer cells with defects in their DNA repair pathways, such as resistant cancers, were more effectively killed using proton therapy combined with a damage repair inhibitor.

The developers at the Mayo Clinic had named the new process for ‘biologically-enhanced particle therapy’ LEAP, with the ability to deliver a LEAP treatment predicated on the ability of the proton therapy system to deposit intense radiation in a microscopic area of the tumour, such as the DNA molecules.

It said the amount of energy deposited per length at a micrometer level, known as ‘dLET’, was thus an important parameter for optimising treatment plans and treating resistant cancers.

The company’s board of directors and its medical advisory board said they believed that LEAP was a “significant step forward” in the application of proton therapy in the treatment of cancers.

As a result, it had demonstrated the capability of LIGHT to bring the new LEAP treatment to patients with resistant cancers.

To do so, Advanced Oncotherapy used data generated by LIGHT and its proprietary treatment planning system to assess the LEAP effect in a patient with triple negative breast cancer for a smaller target partial breast irradiation and whole breast irradiation.

It said the study had three major conclusions, with the first being that dLET was not currently a parameter used in conventional treatment plan systems, however the proprietary treatment planning system of LIGHT had been designed to take into account dLET, thus offering a “more optimised” LEAP treatment.

The maximum achieved dLET values observed with LIGHT within the target for both of the cases considered were “significantly higher” compared to cyclotron systems, which were considered representative of legacy proton systems.

In comparison to cyclotron systems, the resulting LIGHT LEAP plans indicated greater conformity.

Advanced Oncotherapy said the results supported the superior features of LIGHT, being the ability to optimise the treatment plan such that the highly dense ionisation occured at the tumour site and delivered a “significantly smaller” proton beam in comparison to legacy proton therapy systems.

That was expected to pave the way for treating resistant cancers in a more effective way.

“Innovation in cancer is occurring at a pace never seen before, which has resulted in many technological breakthroughs, as evidenced with the development of FLASH, a particularly exciting field which holds great promises for treating patients in one single visit,” said chief clinical officer Jonathan Farr.

“Following the ground-breaking results published by the Mayo Clinic, LEAP represents another paradigm shift in cancer treatment.”

That, Farr said, highlighted the role of proton therapy in combination with specific DNA repair inhibitors as a technology-enabler for personalised treatment, based on the patient's tumour biology.

“Our LIGHT system, due to its smaller beam size compared to legacy systems and its ability to deposit a greater level of radiation damage in a micro-target volume, is ideally suited to accelerate this trend and to further contribute to the development of personalised medicines.”

At 0814 GMT, shares in Advanced Oncotherapy were up 7.79% at 41.5p.