ANGLE PLC (AIM:AGL, OTCQX:ANPCY), a leading company in liquid biopsy technology, has unveiled promising research findings that could help transform the treatment of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), a particularly aggressive form of cancer.
Conducted by a team at the University of Birmingham, the study utilised ANGLE's Parsortix system to analyse circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in patients. These are cells that have detached from the main tumour and circulate in the bloodstream, often leading to the spread of cancer.
The Parsortix system was able to evaluate 41 crucial biological markers, including proteins that act as 'checkpoints' in the immune system.
Understanding these markers can help in developing personalised treatment plans for patients. Scientists employed mass cytometry, a technique that allows for the detailed analysis of individual cells, to gain a deep understanding of the characteristics and diversity of CTCs in HNSCC patients.
HNSCC is a significant global health issue, with approximately 900,000 new cases diagnosed each year, costing the global economy more than US$40 billion annually.
The research findings offer the potential for more precise treatment strategies and real-time monitoring of how well a treatment is working.
Additionally, the work by the Birmingham team paves the way for the development of new biological markers that could help identify patients who might benefit from specific types of immune-based therapies.
Principal investigator Dr Karl Payne said: "To our knowledge, our work represents the first use of cell suspension mass cytometry to characterise CTCs.
"With this protocol, phenotype and activation status of critical intracellular cell signalling proteins can be measured in CTCs and peripheral blood immune cells.
"By allowing high-dimensional single-cell CTC data to be obtained from patients recruited across multiple research sites, we believe our method will accelerate clinical study recruitment and enable robust analysis of CTCs in rare cancers."