The biotechnology company Neogap and the cancer diagnostics company Simsen Diagnostics have initiated a collaboration aimed at improving personalised cancer diagnostics by examining circulating tumour DNA in the blood of patients participating in Neogap's phase I/II clinical trial. The goal is to develop more precise and effective diagnostic tools for cancer.
Neogap Therapeutics has previously announced its plans to initiate a phase I/II clinical trial of its personalised cell therapy for the treatment of patients with disseminated colorectal cancer.
Neogap's pTTL (personalised Trained Tumour Lymphocytes) cell therapy is an immunotherapy designed to treat solid tumours by training the immune system to recognise and attack cancer cells using specific altered proteins, so-called neoantigens.
Neogap has commissioned Simsen Diagnostics to measure the level of circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) in the blood of patients participating in Neogap's upcoming immunotherapy trial. These measurements will be taken at several points during the treatment and will be used to evaluate the therapy's effect by comparing the development and survival of tumour cells over time. Neogap's proprietary PIOR software will be used to analyse the data collected during the trial.
The collaboration opens up opportunities for developing innovative solutions for clinical diagnostics by leveraging each other's expertise and technologies. Neogap's development of a specific PIOR module for ctDNA analysis is of interest to Simsen Diagnostics, which plans to offer services for clinical diagnostics in the future.
"Our technology PIOR is a safe and regulated system for bioinformatic analysis of sequencing data that is also user-friendly. This provides the advantage of securely handling patient data while having the potential for multiple future applications in diagnostics and precision medicine. The collaboration with Simsen is an important step in expanding the PIOR technology towards future commercialization and out-licensing of PIOR, which is very exciting for us," says Samuel Svensson, CEO of Neogap Therapeutics.
"We are excited about the collaboration with Neogap Therapeutics, which allows us to offer our technology for ctDNA analysis to a significant player in the development of personalised cancer immunotherapy. The collaboration also gives us a chance to further develop our technology. By using a quality-assured system for data analysis, we can streamline our analysis and handle more data in less time. This collaboration accelerates our opportunities to become a company that can offer clinical diagnostics. We are confident that the collaboration will positively impact our ability to provide innovative solutions, " says Gustav Johansson, CEO of Simsen Diagnostics.
Neogap's pTTL cell therapy is an immunotherapy that treats solid tumours by training the immune system to recognise and attack cancer cells using specific altered proteins, so-called neoantigens. A neoantigen develops only in the tumour after a genetic mutation and can therefore be identified as foreign by the body's immune system. Neogap uses two technologies to create a personalised treatment for each patient: PIOR and EpiTCer. PIOR selects the most suitable neoantigens for each patient, while EpiTCer multiplies T cells that recognise the selected neoantigens and attack the cancer, leaving healthy tissue untouched. This minimises the risk of side effects from the treatment.