What CellBxHealth does
CelLBxHealth PLC (AIM:CLBX, OTCQB:ANPCF) is the firm behind Parsortix – a simple blood test which can help doctors spot the signs of cancer at an early stage.
Blood tests – or liquid biopsies as they are known to clinicians – are seen as having important advantages over the tissue samples that are commonly used by hospitals: they are less traumatic, return results quicker and are cheaper.
Parsortix is to different to many of its rivals as, rather than testing for fragments of dead cancer cells, it detects and captures circulating tumour cells (CTCs).
CTCs provide the tell-tale signs of cancer and their capture can allow doctors to more accurately assess treatment options.
This method is seen as more reliable because other tests have shown that fragments of dead cancer cells are present in around a quarter of people over 65 who do not have cancer. CTCs, on the other hand, give a complete picture because they can only be found in people with cancer.
The system has also been supported by the results of a study from the University of Southern California (USC), published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences,which highlighted the “key advantages” of its Parsortix system compared to a standard-of-care tissue biopsy.
Independent data from researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE, has, according to CellBX, also provided further evidence that the Parsortix system is able to capture and harvest a variety of CTCs, irrespective of their surface antigens, for downstream molecular analysis.