CelLBxHealth PLC (AIM:CLBX, FRA:DWV), a specialist in circulating tumour cell (CTC) analysis, has announced a research collaboration with The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust to study a novel blood-based testing approach in advanced lung cancer patients.
The two organisations will jointly conduct a clinical study in 200 patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common form of the disease.
The study focuses on a specific subset of patients, estimated at 10-15% of those tested, whose circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) blood tests return uninformative results, meaning they fail to identify actionable genetic mutations that could guide treatment.
For these patients, CelLBxHealth will analyse DNA extracted from CTCs, the cancer cells that shed into the bloodstream, to search for mutations that standard ctDNA testing misses.
The aim is to identify genetic alterations that could make patients eligible for targeted therapies they might otherwise not receive.
Secondary objectives include assessing how closely CTC analysis aligns with tumour tissue profiling and evaluating whether combining the two approaches improves overall detection of clinically relevant mutations.
The study will be led jointly by Dr Lavanya Sivapalan, head of R&D at CelLBxHealth, and Professor Michael Hubank, scientific director of the Clinical Genomics Service at The Royal Marsden.
Results are expected by year's end, with anonymised data to be shared between both parties to support joint analysis.
Peter Collins, chief executive of CelLBxHealth, said the collaboration offered an opportunity to expand treatment options for NSCLC patients for whom standard tissue biopsy and ctDNA testing cannot identify eligibility-conferring genetic alterations.
"By integrating a reflex to CTC-DNA analysis, we aim to identify those clinically actionable alterations and expand treatment options for this patient group," he said.
The Royal Marsden, based in London, is one of the world's largest cancer centres and a longstanding hub for oncology research and clinical innovation.