GUILDFORD, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

ANGLE plc (AIM: AGL OTCQX: ANPCY), a world-leading liquid biopsy company, today announced the presentation of independent study data by Western University on circulating tumor cell (CTC) analysis in preclinical models of cancer metastasis at the Tumor Models Summit in Boston on Thursday, July 20.

The study will be presented by Alison Allan, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Departments of Anatomy & Cell Biology & Oncology Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University based in Toronto, Canada.

The study findings demonstrate the potential use of clinically-relevant CTC technologies such as ANGLE’s proprietary Parsortix™ platform to enhance the translation of cancer biology and highlight the importance of developing cancer drugs using metastasis models, rather than just primary tumor pre-clinical models.

Although a number of quantitative tools have been previously developed to study in vivo metastasis, the detection and quantification of rare metastatic events has remained challenging. To reduce the incidence of metastatic disease, drug development should target the metastatic process itself, which is the cause of over 90 percent of cancer deaths. In particular, the use of clinically-relevant CTC technologies such as the Parsortix system will enhance the translation of cancer biology and new cancer therapies from animal models to clinical trials.

In the study, Dr. Allan used three approaches – Flow Cytometry, CellSearch^®, and Parsortix – to capture and isolate CTCs of mouse models with breast and prostate cancer. In vivo data showed that Parsortix is best suited for this work for multiple reasons including its ability to analyze CTC clusters (which have been shown to be associated with aggressive disease) as well as the option to isolate and recover cells for further analysis. The Parsortix system’s epitope-independence (capturing all types of CTCs) and its automated ease of use are also highlighted.

“Of the three types of liquid biopsy technology employed in cancer management, the analysis of CTCs is the most advanced and could potentially revolutionize the treatment of cancer patients,” said Dr. Allan. “The presence of CTCs can be detected early in the course of a cancer and is a fundamental prerequisite of metastasis. Their identification offers great potential not only in the diagnosis of patients but also in assessing their progression and likely outcome. When comparing the three methods used, ANGLE’s Parsortix system proved to be the most advanced in its ability to harvest viable cells for downstream analysis, which is critical to research and patient care.”

“The findings from Dr. Allan’s study show that ANGLE’s Parsortix system continues to be evaluated positively when compared to other CTC technologies, and has demonstrated pre-clinical utility as well as the potential for clinical utility. A key advantage that Parsortix now offers, which is not available with most other approaches, is a low volume adaptor to enable the processing of small volumes of mouse blood,” said Peggy Robinson, Vice President, ANGLE North America, Inc.

The results of the study demonstrate the utility of CTCs in pre-clinical tumor models. CTCs enable the monitoring of early dissemination and kinetics of the metastatic process in real-time and may lead to an increased understanding of metastatic biology. Further, it could accelerate innovation in metastasis-specific drug development and allow for timely assessment of a patient’s response to a therapy.

Western University is a customer of ANGLE and its research work is independent of the Company.

For more information about the conference, including the full agenda, visit http://tumor-models.com/.

About ANGLE plc

ANGLE is a world-leading liquid biopsy company commercialising a disruptive platform technology that can capture cells circulating in blood, such as cancer cells, even when they are as rare in number as one cell in one billion blood cells, and harvest the cells for analysis.

ANGLE’s cell separation technology is called the Parsortix™ system and it enables a liquid biopsy (simple blood test) to be used to provide the cells of interest. Parsortix is the subject of granted patents in Europe, the United States, Canada, China, Japan and Australia and three extensive families of patents are being progressed worldwide. The system is based on a microfluidic device that captures live cells based on a combination of their size and compressibility. Parsortix has a CE Mark for Europe and FDA authorisation is in process for the United States.

ANGLE has established formal collaborations with world-class cancer centres. These Key Opinion Leaders are working to identify applications with medical utility (clear benefit to patients), and to secure clinical data that demonstrates that utility in patient studies. Details are available here http://www.angleplc.com/the-company/collaborators/

The analysis of the cells that can be harvested from patient blood with ANGLE’s Parsortix system has the potential to help deliver personalised cancer care offering profound improvements in clinical and health economic outcomes in the treatment and diagnosis of various forms of cancer.

The global increase in cancer to a 1 in 3 lifetime incidence is set to drive a multi-billion dollar clinical market. The Parsortix system is designed to be compatible with existing major medtech analytical platforms and to act as a companion diagnostic for major pharma in helping to identify patients that will benefit from a particular drug and then monitoring the drug’s effectiveness.

As well as cancer, the Parsortix technology has the potential for deployment with several other important cell types in the future.

ANGLE stock trades on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol AGL and in New York on the OTC-QX under the ticker symbol ANPCY. For further information please visit: www.angleplc.com

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