Angle’s Andrew Newland talks to EPM about the high level of interest from across the globe in the company’s cell separation technology, Parsortix, which captures cancer cells circulating in the blood — even if they are as few as one in one billion — and harvests those cells for analysis
Angle’s Andrew Newland
Q: How does your CTCs (circulating tumour cells) system differ from others?
A: The Parsortix system harvests CTCs from patient blood without the use of antibody-based capture processes. As a result, it captures all types of CTCs including the mesenchymal CTCs involved in metastasis that are missed by traditional systems. The Parsortix system provides high purity CTCs with low levels of residual white blood cells and the target cells can be easily harvested for analysis using existing analytical techniques.
Q: This year the Parsortix machine has been granted Chinese and Australian patents, as well as endorsement from several major cancer centres, what does this mean for the company and product moving forward?
A: We already have two granted US patents and we have patent applications pending worldwide. The grant of these patents in China and Australia extends our protection over the Parsortix separation technology into major new markets. There is strong and growing interest in both China and Australia for liquid biopsies, and we anticipate that following Europe and the US, these will be important markets for Parsortix.
Q: A key application is personalised cancer care, would you explain how the system will assist pharmaceutical companies in delivering medicines that deviate from the ‘one size fits all’ approach?
A: In order to deliver on personalised medicine, having access to patient material such as CTCs that is relatively easy to collect and analyse is critical. The beauty of the Parsortix system is that we provide pharmaceutical companies and physicians’ access to these cells from a simple blood test. The liquid biopsy is non-invasive and may be easily repeated throughout the patient’s treatment, enabling targeted therapy.
Q: Clinical trials are the next hurdle, are there collaborations in the pipeline?
A: Yes, as an example we are collaborating with the Medical University of Vienna on a clinical study to use the Parsortix System to triage women having surgery to remove abnormal pelvic masses into those with a high risk of ovarian cancer and those with benign growths. There are 200,000 women a year in the US alone having such operations. Knowing in advance which ones are at risk from ovarian cancer will dramatically improve the results of their treatment whilst at the same time reducing healthcare costs by targeting specialist resources only where they are needed.
Q: When do you think the Parsortix will be commercially available?
A: The Parsortix system is already commercially available for research use. It is CE Marked for clinical use in Europe and we are in the process with the FDA in the US. The first clinical applications are expected in about 18 months.
Q: ANGLE has stated that the Parsortix may potentially be used for the detection of other cell types besides cancer, can you elaborate?
A: The Parsortix system has the potential to harvest a range of clinically relevant cells from patient blood. As well as cancer patient care, another opportunity is in non-invasive prenatal diagnosis through the analysis of foetal cells harvested from the mother’s blood.