ANGLE Plc

ANGLE was founded by Andrew Newland in 1994 to bridge a gap between research and the market. ANGLE's business model is to set up, own and operate technology companies to commercialise world-class research.

The business has matured so that it now focuses on its established 90%+ owned businesses with unique high value patent protected medical technologies addressing multi-billion dollar markets.

ANGLE's lead product is the Parsortix cell separation device, which can capture very rare circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in cancer patient blood – even when there is less than one CTC in one billion healthy cells. ANGLE is aiming to launch a product for the research market in 2012 and for the clinical market in 2013.

ANGLE has a highly efficient investment model. Costs are minimised by the use of third party collaborations and partnerships and by the contribution of its consulting business to overheads. The existing businesses are over six years old. ANGLE's efforts are directed to maximising shareholder returns from these businesses and there are no plans to set up new companies.

Risk is further offset by the revenue generating computer graphics company, which has the potential to deliver a near-term capital return to ANGLE.

Parsortix Cell Separation

Illness and death from cancer is an enormous problem worldwide and is the focus of a large proportion of all medical costs in the developed world.

Cancer Research UK's statistics suggest that men have a 45% likelihood of suffering cancer during their life. Women are only slightly lower at 41%.

Incidence of all types of cancer have risen significantly over the last thirty years with the sole exception of lung cancer. 90% of all lung cancers are attributable to smoking and the reduction in smoking has lead to a fall in the incidence of lung cancer.

Our partner, the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research, is a world leader in CTC biomarkers (substances that can be measured to determine several factors such as how well a patient is responding to a treatment) and won the 2011 Cancer Research UK Prize for their work identifying a specific bio-marker on the CTC in relation to the treatment of lung cancer patients. With their help, we hope to deploy the Parsortix separation device in the care of lung cancer patients.

The most prevalent cancer for men is prostate (lifetime risk of 12.1%). The incidence has grown significantly over the last thirty years.

Our partner, the University of Surrey Oncology Department are particular experts in prostate cancer and, with their help, we hope to be able to identify specific prostate cancer biomarkers on captured CTCs in the future.

For women, by far the most prevalent cancer is breast cancer (lifetime risk of 12.5%). This has grown in incidence alarmingly over the last thirty years. 

ANGLE's very first testing of the Parsortix separation device was undertaken using breast cancer spiked blood. Our device appears to very successfully capture cultured breast cancer cells and we are hopefully it may be used in the treatment of breast cancer patients in the future.

The Importance of Capturing CTCs

Solid tumour cancers, such as breast cancer and prostate cancer, shed cancer cells into the patient's blood stream.

These are known as circulating tumour cells (CTCs). They circulate in the patient's blood stream until either the patient's immune system destroys them or they land in another organ, for example the lungs or brain, and start growing there. These new tumours are known as secondary cancers as they are derived from the original primary tumour.

CTCs are very rare, perhaps a single cell in one billion blood cells, and as a result are very difficult to isolate.

The CTCs carry important medical information, which may help with:

• Early detection of cancer;
• Targeting treatment;
• Monitoring of cancer patients during treatment; and
• Post-treatment monitoring of cancer patients in remission.

We believe the Parsortix separation device offers the potential for a simple, effective and affordable technique to capture CTCs, irrespective of the cancer type.

How it works

Parsortix has developed an innovative cell separation platform technology for the isolation of cells in blood, including cells which occur in very low numbers.

This technology was previously proven in the separation of intact foetal cells from peripheral maternal blood and is now being developed by ANGLE as a cancer diagnostic tool for the capture of circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in cancer patient blood.

The Parsortix separation device captures cells based on their physical characteristics.

The separation device is a form of filter. The CTCs are larger than normal cells in the blood and their skeletal structure is less compressible. As a result when blood is flowed through the Parsortix device the CTCs are captured on the specially designed steps within the Parsortix device whilst other cells are allowed to pass through the device.

Advantages of Parsortix

We believe Parsortix's technology has the potential to be both significantly cheaper and more effective than identified competitor products, which utilise surface-marker antibody affinity capture.

Antibody affinity capture technology requires advance knowledge of the cancer that the patient is suffering in order that the specific antibody for that particular cancer can be used. It is subject to false negatives (i.e. failing to identify CTCs when they are present in the blood sample) where there is a weak epithelial marker and it cannot be used at all in cases, such as ovarian cancer, where there is no established antibody for the cancer.

The Parsortix separation technology is not dependent on antibody affinity capture. It offers the potential to capture CTCs, without knowing in advance which cancer is to be identified and regardless of whether there is a strong epithelial marker or not, or whether there is an identified antibody for the particular cancer.

ANGLE has so far tested the Parsortix separation device's capability of capturing cultured breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer and colon cancer cells when added in very small quantities to healthy blood (spiked blood). Use of spiked blood is an established approach for testing a medical diagnostic device of this kind as it ensures that a known number of cancer cells are present in the sample.

The results suggest that the patented Parsortix cell separation device:

• Can be used, on a reproducible basis, to isolate and capture very small numbers of cancer cells from whole blood;
• Appears to efficiently capture all of the cancer cells, avoiding the risk of failing to detect cancer cells present in a blood sample;
• Allows the identification of cancer cells within the device, without requiring a complicated cell extraction process;
• Does not require use of expensive and sometimes unreliable antibody affinity capture technology to isolate the cancer cells.
• Initial testing of the device with prostate cancer patient blood has been successful and we believe that the device has the potential to offer a simple, effective and affordable solution for the capture of CTCs in patient blood.

ANGLE plc Board Members

Garth Selvey

Non Executive Chairman

Garth Selvey has a BSc in Physics and Electronics Engineering from the University of Manchester and has spent thirty six years in the computer industry with technical, product, sales and marketing roles. 

Andrew Newland

Chief Executive

Andrew Newland is the founder and Chief Executive of ANGLE plc. For over twenty five years, he has specialised in building technology-based businesses based on strong intellectual property and for the last fifteen years he has been Chairman or on the Board of several specialist medical technology companies. 

Ian Griffiths

Finance Director

Ian Griffiths is the Finance Director of ANGLE plc. He has specialised in technology commercialisation for over 20 years and is an expert on the development and growth of new technology based businesses. 

David Quysner

Non-executive Director

David Quysner has an MA from the University of Cambridge. His career spans more than 40 years of investing in technology companies, initially with 3i and subsequently at Abingworth, an international investment group dedicated to the life sciences and healthcare sectors. 

Parsortix Executive Management

Andrew Newland

Chairman

Please see biography above.

Shane Booth

CEO and President of Parsortix, Inc

Since joining ANGLE in 1997 Shane has been active across our business areas, particularly those concerning the development and management of bioscience based companies. Read more...

George Hvichia

Chief Technology Officer, Parsortix Inc

George E. Hvichia, PhD, the company’s founder, Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Research was trained in Bioengineering and is an expert in Microfluidics and Biochips. He has developed microdevices for industry and in academic settings. Read more...

Ian Griffiths

Chief Financial Officer

Please see biography above.

The following shareholders amount to 3% or more of the ordinary share capital of the company.

Shares in issue: 37,824,559 10p Ords

Updated from Angle Website 21.05.2012