17th Sep 2014 08:32
LONDON (Alliance News) - ANGLE PLC said Wednesday that it has signed a collaboration agreement with Ludwig Boltzmann Cluster 'Translational Oncology,' located at the Medical University of Vienna, to investigate the clinical use of the Parsortix system for ovarian cancer.
The specialist medical technology company said the collaboration will be led by the head of the interdisciplinary Molecular Oncology Group at Medical University of Vienna, Professor Robert Zeillinger.
Zeillinger and his team are evaluating ANGLE's Parsortix system for its efficacy at capturing circulating tumour cells from ovarian cancer patient blood with the ambition of using the system in combination with ribonucleic acid markers for CTCs that have already been developed by the team.
There is particular interest in the Parsortix system as it is epitope-independent and does not use an antibody-based capture process, which is known to be limited in its effectiveness for ovarian cancer, since most of ovarian cancer CTCs do not express the epithelial cell surface marker EpCAM which is widely used for CTC capturing.
The EpCAM protein is found spanning the membrane that surrounds epithelial cells, where it is involved in cell adhesion.
"Existing antibody-based systems do not work well with ovarian cancer so we are very pleased to be working with ANGLE and the Parsortix system. Some 67,000 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer Europe-wide each year and 42,000 die annually of this disease. A major treatment obstacle is the fact that although about 75% of patients respond to first-line chemotherapy, most of these patients relapse and eventually die of the disease. We hope that by investigating the CTCs of patients, using ANGLE's Parsortix system, we can identify ways to improve the treatment offered to these patients," said Zeillinger.
ANGLE is focused on establishing the use of the Parsortix system in clinical practice and has enteres into collaborations with key opinion leaders at world class research centres. "ANGLE believes this is the optimal approach for unlocking the multi-billion dollar worldwide market available to the Company and its potential strategic partners," said the company in a statement Wednesday.
Shares in ANGLE were Wednesday morning trading flat at 88.00 pence per share.
By Alice Attwood; [email protected]; @AliceAtAlliance
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