New Study Results Presented at ASCO Supports DiviTum® for Monitoring Advanced Breast Cancer Treatment - Biovica International AB

STOCKHOLM, May 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The EFECT-study evaluated standard hormonal therapies for women with advanced breast cancer and DiviTum® was used as a non-invasive tool for monitoring therapy response. 244 patients had blood samples analyzed with DiviTum® in a collaboration between AstraZeneca, Prato Hospital, Italy, Institute Jules Bordet, Belgium, British Columbia Cancer Agency, Canada and Biovica, Sweden.

DiviTum® measures the activity of serum thymidine kinase (TK) activity which plays a critical role in DNA synthesis and cell proliferation. The study found that serum TK is a circulating prognostic and monitoring marker in patients with advanced breast cancer treated with hormonal therapy. By evaluating levels of TK during treatment DiviTum® can provide important information for treating physicians. Patients resistant to on-going hormonal therapies can be identified, enabling alternative treatment options.

The ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology) annual meeting taking place June 1-5 in Chicago is the largest scientific cancer congress in the world (40 thousand participants in 2017).

"Endocrine therapy is the treatment of choice for patients with metastatic breast cancer expressing hormone receptors; however, as clinicians, we currently do not have tools to early identify those patients who will do good with endocrine therapy alone or may need additional treatment. The results from our work with DiviTum are exciting and confirm in a larger number of patients our previous observation that this assay may indeed help clinicians in this hard task. DiviTum will certainly become a very useful tool for the development of innovative clinical trials in this field, and ultimately for clinical practice," – says Dr Luca Malorni, MD, PhD, Prato Hospital, Italy.

"These results reinforce what we have seen in previous studies, proving that DiviTum® can provide clinically relevant information highly beneficial for women with advanced breast cancer on hormonal therapy," says Anders Rylander, CEO Biovica and continues,"We are convinced that bringing products like DiviTum® to the market will contribute to bringing the best possible treatment for cancer patients."

Malorni L et al, ASCO Annual Meeting 2018; abstract #12031

http://abstracts.asco.org/214/AbstView_214_219453.html

CONTACT:

Anders Rylander,
CEO Biovica.
Phone: +46(0)18-444-48-35,
E-mail: [email protected]

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