Two key announcements in two days appear to have done the trick for med-tech firm ANGLE (LON:AGL), whose shares are up 12%.
Earlier, the Medical University of Vienna updated on its work using ANGLE’s system for harvesting tumour cells from the blood in tandem with genetic markers.
The company said the highly encouraging results substantiated initial research identifying the tell-tale signs of ovarian cancer, known as the silent killer because it's very difficult to detect.
Meanwhile, on Monday the Kimmel Cancer Center, at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, released more data from its breast cancer study.
Both sets of results are being published at one of the major cancer conferences in the US - the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting, also in Philadelphia.
Earlier today details of updated results of the Medical University of Vienna study using ANGLE’s Parsortix device, which captures circulating tumour cells in harness, with genetic markets.
It revealed this combination approach to be very good at not only finding tumours, but then identifying them.
It confirmed Parsortix used with RNA markers is particularly good at singling out ovarian cancer cells in the blood stream.
Crucially, and new today, it appeared to back up the findings of the Kimmel study.
The important new data shows that a sensitivity of 71% was achieved with the metastatic breast cancer patients, which is more than twice as high as achieved in studies using other CTC systems.
The study assessed 65 patients: 42 cancer patients and 23 healthy normal volunteers.
Of that total 24 had ovarian cancer, six cervical cancer, five endometrial cancer (cancer of the womb) and seven breast cancer.
The analysis of seven RNA markers yielded 100% ‘specificity’, which means there were no false positives, a major problem with existing techniques.
The sensitivity of ovarian cancer was 80% at the point of diagnosis and 78% at relapse, which compares favourably to the 24.5% sensitivity, which is the best that has been achieved with other circulating tumour cell (CTC) systems.
“We are full speed ahead with Medical University Vienna and multiple other cancer centres to expand the patient study to provide enough data support regulatory authorisation for a test for ovarian cancer. We think this is 19 months away,” ANGLE chief executive Andrew Newland told Proactive Investors.
“It was very exciting that Medical University of Vienna extended the work into breast cancer. What it found there they correctly identified 71% of breast cancer patients using seven markers. That goes up to over 90% with the 30 RNA markers.”
Together the markets for diagnostic tests for ovarian and breast cancer are worth in excess around £1.3bn, according to Newland.
“We are extremely excited about this major breakthrough,” he said.
At 2.10pm, the stock was changing hands for 81.5p, valuing the business at £48.5mln.