Mitra Biotech's CANScript Platform Validated for Personalized Cancer Care
BANGALORE, BOSTON and CHICAGO, March 5, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --
Mitra Biotech, a cancer diagnostics company, today announced that a study validating its flagship platform CANScript[TM] has been published in Nature Communications, an open access, multidisciplinary journal dedicated to publishing high-quality research in all areas of the biological, physical, chemical and earth sciences. Papers published by the journal represent important advances of significance to specialists within each field. The article "Predicting clinical response to anti-cancer drugs using an ex vivo platform that captures tumor heterogeneity" was published in Nature Communications on February 27, 2015 and can be viewed at: http://ow.ly/JJPkm.
Scientists from Mitra reported key findings that may open a new avenue in predicting clinical response to anti-cancer drugs. The team showed that by maintaining the complex structure and behaviour of tumors in tissue culture plates, CANScript[TM]can predict the response of individual patient tumors to anti-cancer drugs. The findings are a result of collaborative efforts undertaken by a team from Mitra Biotech, Harvard Medical School, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the Broad Institute at MIT along with other institutions in the United States and India.
"The study is the first-of-its-kind in delineating the importance of capturing tumor heterogeneity to elicit accurate prediction of clinical response," said Dr Leena Gandhi, a thoracic oncologist and clinical investigator at Dana Farber Cancer Institute at Boston, who is not associated with the study. "This platform has potential application not only in treatment decisions for individual patients but also in oncology drug development," she further added.
"CANScript[TM]is a novel platform based on systems biology, and it has the ability to change the paradigm in cancer treatment," stated Dr. Padhma Radhakrishnan, one of the senior team members. Unlike other 3D technologies, CANScript[TM] facilitates a thorough understanding of the biology of a tumor in a truly personalized setting while maintaining the slices of tissues in a plate. "We do not limit our analysis to a specific gene or a drug pathway; rather, we examine the complete tumor ecosystem in order to predict both positive and negative clinical responses using a common set up," said Dr. Biswanath Majumder, PhD, the lead author of this paper.
More about CANScript[TM]
CANScript[TM] is a multi-dimensional platform technology that challenges tumor tissue from patient against multiple drug combinations in a system encompassing the human-tumor microenvironment. CANScript[TM] is especially useful in a secondary metastatic setting in which physicians have limited time and options to decide on suitable drug combinations. CANScript[TM] measures a number of functional parameters like cell viability, proliferation, death and morphology using various assays. The turnaround time for the test is a week, wherein the information classifying various drug combinations as potential responders and non-responders is given to the physicians to enable informed treatment decision in real time.
About Mitra Biotech™
Founded in 2009, Mitra Biotech is a cancer diagnostics company focused on offering personalized cancer treatment to patients through its high-end multidimensional platform CANScript[TM] . The company's state-of-the-art infrastructure and Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved protocols ensure accurate results at rapid turnaround times. It also has broad intellectual property around CANScript[TM]. Mitra has operations in Chicago, Boston and Bangalore and is funded by global venture capital firms. For more information, please visit http://www.mitrabiotech.com and follow us on @mitrabiotech and facebook.com/mitrabiotechnology.
For further information, please contact:
Ragini C Iyer
+91-9620750620
Business Development Manager
Mitra Biotech Pvt. Ltd
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