Microfluidic Liquid Biopsy Technology from ANGLE plc Featured in Research Presented at AACR 2017

ANGLE plc, a UK-based medical diagnostics company with pioneering products for cancer diagnostics and fetal health, announces three poster presentations that highlight the advantages of marker-independent capture of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) using the Parsortix™ cell separation system in blood samples from patients with various types of cancer. The posters will be presented at the American Association of Cancer Researchers Annual Meeting April 1-5.

Researchers Martha Zavridou, Evi Lianidou and colleagues from University of Athens and Attikon University Hospital, (Athens Greece) successfully used the Parsortix system for the first time to isolate CTCs from patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. They were able to extract RNA of excellent quality from the CTCs, which was then used for RT-qPCR gene expression analysis. Preliminary results showing over-expression of key genes - such as PD-L1 in >26% of samples - could have significant clinical value in identifying biomarker-positive patients who are likely to respond to individualized immunotherapy.

Yvonne Maertens and a team of researchers from University Hospital Muenster (Germany) compared the ability to isolate and detect circulating renal cancer cells from patient blood samples using the size-based Parsortix system, EpCAM-based CTC enrichment, or methods based on cell density or invasive capacity. The Parsortix system yielded the highest recovery rates of CTCs.

The Parsortix system was used by researchers Jenny Antonello et al. from CRUK Manchester and the Christie NHS Foundation Trust Manchester (U.K.), together with an epitope-dependent EpCAM-based enrichment method to capture CTCs over time from blood samples of patients with prostate cancer as part of a study to identify and monitor biomarkers that may be linked, either alone or in combination, to clinical status or outcomes.

“We are very pleased with the increased adoption and utilization of Parsortix™ cell separation in such diversified research. We continue to see greater utilization of our flagship technology in key liquid biopsy research,” said ANGLE Founder and Chief Executive, Andrew Newland.