For immediate release |
23 November 2017 |
ANGLE plc ("the Company")
COLLABORATION WITH PHILIPS IN BREAST AND RECTAL CANCER
ANGLE to receive European research grants of £0.4 million
ANGLE plc (AIM:AGL OTCQX:ANPCY), a world-leading liquid biopsy company, is pleased to announce that it has established a collaboration with Philips to develop liquid biopsy solutions. Philips has successfully secured a European Union research grant worth €6.3 million, of which £0.4 million will flow to ANGLE.
Philips has selected ANGLE's ParsortixTM system as the sole system to be used for harvesting circulating tumor cells (CTCs) for analysis in the research collaboration, which is an important area of development for Philips following its restructuring in 2016 to focus on healthcare.
The collaboration with Philips comes shortly after ANGLE's announcement of its co-marketing agreement with QIAGEN and is part of ANGLE's strategy to establish partnerships with a wide range of large companies for the commercialisation of ParsortixTM. In the year to 31 December 2016, of Philips' total revenues of €24.5 billion, €17.5 billion came from healthcare, which is their focus for future growth.
The collaboration is planned for a four year period. It is estimated that grant funding of £0.1 million and £0.2 million will be received by ANGLE in the financial years ending 30 April 2018 and 2019, respectively. The remaining £0.1 million will spread over the following three financial years.
ANGLE Founder and Chief Executive, Andrew Newland, commented:
"We are delighted to be working with Philips and the other commercial partners on the development of new liquid biopsy solutions. We look forward to joint commercialisation of these solutions and to working closely with Philips going forward. This is a further demonstration of ANGLE's strategy to partner with large corporates to deliver widespread adoption of ANGLE's ParsortixTM CTC harvesting system."
The press release issued by Philips today is reproduced in full below.
PHILIPS
Press Information
November 23, 2017
Philips-led research consortium awarded EUR 6.3 million EU grant to develop integrated approaches for personalized cancer treatment
· Four-year research project aims to increase accuracy of both genetic and functional characterization of primary breast and rectal cancer
· Clinical research studies to be carried out at University Medical Center Utrecht (the Netherlands) and the Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale (France)
Amsterdam, the Netherlands - Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA), a global leader in health technology, together with its consortium partners, today announced that it has been awarded a EUR 6.3 million Horizon 2020 EU research grant to develop an integrated approach for personalized cancer treatment. The four-year research project, 'Liquid biopsies and IMAging for improved cancer care' (LIMA), aims to increase the accuracy of both genetic and functional characterization of primary breast cancer and rectal cancer by combining two diagnostic technologies: advanced blood tests called liquid biopsy and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). The clinical research studies will be carried out at the University Medical Center Universitair Medisch Centrum Utrecht in the Netherlands, and the Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale in France.
Integrating personalized treatment into the clinical workflow
Each patient and tumor is unique, and often a treatment that's effective for one patient will be ineffective for another. The LIMA project aims to develop and validate tools and techniques that can be applied during the early stages of cancer treatment. This may enable clinicians to better understand the effectiveness of their approach, and to potentially adapt further steps in the individual treatment of the patient.
Liquid biopsies, advanced laboratory analysis based on routinely drawn blood samples, support diagnosis by providing in-depth genetic information about tumors and metastases in the body. The analysis can be based on circulating tumor DNA (ct-DNA) or Circulating Tumor Cells (CTC) contained in the blood samples. MRI gives physicians information about the location of the cancer and functional information about the tumor tissue composition. For example, diffusion weighted MRI and perfusion MRI, well-known imaging biomarkers in oncology, will be further developed for tumor detection and characterization in order to provide comprehensive and quantitative information for an integral diagnostic approach. In addition, properties of MRI contrast at and around the tumor will be analyzed to shed light on the tumor grade and biological status, a field of imaging sciences called 'radiomics'.
"In collaboration with our partners we will combine a range of liquid biopsy technologies, which give us more detailed molecular information, with advanced MRI techniques, which could enable us to better understand the impact of treatment at an early stage," said Hans Hofstraat, innovation program manager, Philips. "This has the potential to improve patient outcomes and potentially represents a significant step forward in delivering personalized cancer treatment."
"With liquid biopsies we can analyze circulating tumor DNA and tumor cells in cancer that's advanced in a specific part of the body," said Alain Thierry, Research Director, at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Medicale (INSERM), Montpellier, France. "This technique is an important emerging field in diagnostics, particularly in oncology, and is starting to have a positive impact on patient care."
"This project will allow us to build methods to look inside the body in much more detail, which has the potential to improve the treatment we provide and make a significant positive impact on the lives of our patients," said Kenneth Gilhuijs, associate professor and research coordinator at University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht, the Netherlands. "By understanding the impact of treatment at an early stage, we will be able to deliver more targeted and effective therapy."
Alongside Philips, INSERM and UMC Utrecht, the project involves several SMEs that have developed innovative technologies for liquid biopsies: Agena Bioscience GmbH (Germany), DiaDx (France) and Stilla Technologies (France) provide technologies for analyzing ct-DNA, ANGLE plc (UK) for CTC isolation and ALS Automation Lab Solutions GmbH (Germany) for single CTC detection and selection."
Horizon 2020 is the largest-ever EU Research and Innovation program, with the goal of ensuring Europe produces world-class science, removes barriers to innovation and makes it easier for the public and private sectors to work together in delivering innovation.
For further information, please contact:
Mark Groves
Philips Innovation & Strategy
Tel.: +31 631 639 916
E-mail: [email protected]
About Royal Philips
Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) is a leading health technology company focused on improving people's health and enabling better outcomes across the health continuum from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. Philips leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver integrated solutions. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company is a leader in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, patient monitoring and health informatics, as well as in consumer health and home care. Philips' health technology portfolio generated 2016 sales of EUR 17.4 billion and employs approximately 73,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. News about Philips can be found at www.philips.com/newscenter.
For further information ANGLE:
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Andrew Newland, Chief Executive Ian Griffiths, Finance Director |
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For Frequently Used Terms, please see the Company's website on http://www.angleplc.com/the-parsortix-system/glossary/
This announcement contains inside information.
Notes for editors
About ANGLE plc www.angleplc.com
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 ParsortixTM 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, India, 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. The ParsortixTM system 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 ParsortixTM 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 ParsortixTM 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 ParsortixTM 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
