CelLBxHealth PLC (AIM:CLBX, FRA:DWV) shares rose 8% to 0.99p after the AIM-listed circulating tumour cell specialist 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 targets patients whose circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) blood tests return uninformative results, estimated at 10-15% of those tested, meaning they fail to identify actionable genetic mutations that could guide treatment.
For these patients, CelLBxHealth will analyse DNA extracted from CTCs, cancer cells that shed into the bloodstream, to search for mutations that standard ctDNA testing misses, with the aim of identifying genetic alterations that could make patients eligible for targeted therapies they might otherwise not receive.
Results are expected by year-end, with anonymised data shared between both parties to support joint analysis.
Peter Collins, chief executive, 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.