Results From The Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center At Thomas Jefferson University

GUILDFORD, England, April 20, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- ANGLE plc (AIM:AGLOTCQX:ANPCY), the specialist medtech company, is pleased to announce that the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, one of its key opinion leaders, has published results of its work evaluating the potential for ANGLE's Parsortix system to be used in single cell analysis for breast cancer. 

The results are being published as a poster at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2015 being held in Philadelphia ("AACR").  AACR is one of the world's largest and most influential cancer conferences.  The poster can be downloaded from the ANGLE website here http://www.angleplc.com/the-parsortix-system/download-files/.

A key challenge in investigating the metastatic process and improving the therapeutic benefit of cancer treatment is the heterogeneity (genetic variability) of the cancer cells.  There are major potential benefits if circulating tumour cells (CTCs) can be harvested from patient blood and then processed individually one-by-one as intact cells for analysis.  Technically this requires a high performance CTC capture and harvesting system that provides harvested CTCs in a form capable of then being processed by a single cell analysis system.

The Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University have successfully tested the Parsortix system in combination with the single cell analysis DEPArray system to isolate single cancer cells from blood samples spiked with cultured breast cancer cells.  The team proved the ability to manipulate the individual cancer cells from the Parsortix system and to correctly identify two breast cancer related genes (Estrogen receptor alpha (ESR1) and p53) on the cells using standard PCR analysis techniques. 

The research collaboration was led by Dr. Massimo Cristofanilli, an internationally renowned breast cancer researcher and clinician, and Director of the Jefferson Breast Care Center at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center and Thomas Jefferson University and Hospitals.  Dr Cristofanilli has been an acknowledged leader in the CTC field since 2004, when his study on CTCs was published in The New England Journal of Medicine.  

The work will now focus on molecular analysis in specified disease status and treatment settings to better identify clinical applications for more effective treatment of women with metastatic breast cancer.

Dr Massimo Cristofanilli, Director of the Jefferson Breast Care Center at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center and Thomas Jefferson University and Hospitals, commented:
"We demonstrated that using the Parsortix system in conjunction with DEPArray we are able to isolate single, uncontaminated tumor cells to achieve single cell molecular analysis. The use of single cells is emerging as a powerful approach to molecular analysis in oncology. The Parsortix system has the ability to advance molecular testing, study cancer heterogeneity and apply concepts of precision medicine to breast cancer patients' care." 

ANGLE Founder and Chief Executive, Andrew Newland, commented:
"The ability to capture and harvest individual CTCs for routine analysis is an important step that has proved extremely difficult until now.  Our aim is that the Parsortix system will provide a simple and effective way to harvest CTCs for mutation, gene expression and other types of molecular analysis so that there is a way to determine which drugs may benefit individual patients."

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