ANGLE PLC (AIM:AGL, OTCQX:ANPCY, FRA:DWV) (AIM:AGL), the liquid biopsy specialist, said its Parsortix system has performed favourably in an independent study of metastatic breast cancer (MBC) patients.
The preliminary study by the Institute of Oncology, Ljubljana, Slovenia compared ANGLE's Parsortix system to an alternative antibody-based approach for the isolation of circulating tumour cells (CTCs) to determine whether these systems could be integrated into routine laboratory use.
Results from this study showed that the Parsortix system was able to harvest CTCs in a greater proportion of MBC patients (64%), compared to the antibody-based system (57%), and 99% of the cancer cells recovered by the Parsortix system had preserved morphology (size, shape and structure), allowing morphological analysis, whereas less than 1% of the cells recovered by the antibody-based system had preserved morphology. In addition, samples processed using the Parsortix system were also found to be of higher purity, with fewer blood cells present in the harvest.
The proportion of MBC patients where cancer cells could be harvested for analysis using the Parsortix system also significantly exceeded the proportion of patients where cancer cells could be recovered from metastatic sites using tissue biopsy as less than 50% of MBC patients receive a successful tissue biopsy in accordance with US National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) clinical practice guidelines due to being too sick for the invasive procedure, inaccessibility of the tumour or failed procedures.
The authors concluded that these results, combined with its ease of use, position the Parsortix system as the optimal system for integration into a routine cytopathology laboratory.
"This study, aimed to identify which of the two separation methods is more appropriate for integration into our routine clinical cytopathology laboratory,” explained Professor Veronika Kloboves-Prevodnik, the head of the department of cytopathology at the Institute of Oncology in Ljubliana.
“In our metastatic breast cancer cohort, we found that the Parsortix system was in general superior to the antibody-based system in terms of purity, quality, and quantity of CTCs. The advantage of the size-based Parsortix system is its ability to harvest cells with a range of phenotypes. The approach is promising and might be integrated into routine cytopathology laboratory practice in the near future. To achieve that, more data about immunocytochemical determination of CTC phenotypes and correlation with clinical data are needed," the professor said.
Andrew Newland, the founder and chief executive of ANGLE, said the company was pleased by “such promising results”.
“This is key to our aim of establishing the Parsortix system as the global standard for liquid biopsy from CTCs,” Newland said.