CORRECTING & REPLACING Xcell Biosciences Initiates New Collaborations with UCSF Researchers Studying Effectiveness of Immunot...
September 22 2016 - 11:12AM
Business Wire
Studies Assess the Ability to Predict Prognosis
and Response to Therapies by Immunoprofiling of Patients’ Blood,
Cultured and Conditioned with Xcell’s Unique Avatar System
Please replace the release with the following corrected version
due to multiple revisions.
The corrected release reads:
XCELL BIOSCIENCES INITIATES NEW
COLLABORATIONS WITH UCSF RESEARCHERS STUDYING EFFECTIVENESS OF
IMMUNOTHERAPY IN UROLOGIC CANCERS
Studies Assess the Ability to Predict Prognosis
and Response to Therapies by Immunoprofiling of Patients’ Blood,
Cultured and Conditioned with Xcell’s Unique Avatar System
Xcell Biosciences, Inc., announced today that it has extended
its collaborative work with the University of California, San
Francisco (UCSF) to include working with three principal
investigators on pilot studies using Xcell’s Avatar cell culture
system and proprietary analytics platform. The work will determine
if large scale RNA profiling from peripheral blood and other
patient-derived sample sources cultured in the Avatar System and
correlated to clinical outcomes can predict a patient’s response to
first or second line treatments in prostate, bladder and kidney
cancers.
Charles J. Ryan, MD, Professor of Clinical Medicine and Urology
and the Clinical Program Leader for Genitourinary Medical Oncology
at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, has
been collaborating with Xcell for several years on a number of
projects. The latest involves studying the relationship between
genomic variation in prostate cancer patient samples and response
to treatment, including in patients who have developed resistance
to standard of care therapies.
“We are particularly enthusiastic about the opportunity to use
the Avatar system to compare results from liquid biopsies to actual
tissue biopsies,” said Dr. Ryan. “We also are optimistic about the
ability to use the system to look at broad-scale genomic
alterations in cancer patients without the necessity for looking at
circulating tumor cells, cell free DNA or tissue biopsies. Xcell’s
system offers the opportunity to look at different types of
analysis all with one blood draw – for example, potential
relationships between immunology, androgen receptors, and DNA
repair in prostate cancer.”
Terry Friedlander, MD, Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine
at UCSF, is collaborating on studies involving prostate and bladder
cancer. “We are excited about this collaboration and the potential
ability to use the Avatar system as an immunologic springboard,” he
said. “Predicting treatment response is a huge unanswered question
in oncology in general. If the Avatar system can keep the cells in
the same state that they were in the body, we may get a more
accurate read on the activation status of the immune system and
determine markers that might help predict response to
treatment.”
UCSF medical oncologist Won Kim, MD, who is leading a study in
kidney cancer, added: “Kidney cancer is a disease where we have a
real shortage of predictive and prognostic biomarkers. For this
pilot study, we’re hopeful that we will show that the data
generated from Xcell’s platform will help us identify which
patients with renal cell cancer are more likely to respond to
tyrosine kinase inhibitors or immunotherapy. We all want these
feasibility studies to succeed because there are so many cancers
where tissue is just not easy to access.”
James Lim, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at Xcell Biosciences,
commented, “We are delighted to continue our collaborative work
with UCSF, a leading center for cancer clinical research, on these
new studies. We believe our RNA-based whole transcriptome approach
to liquid biopsy will enable us to generate unique gene expression
signatures that will predict a patient’s response to a given
therapeutic. Our goal is to ultimately demonstrate evidence that
the Avatar system’s physiologically relevant microenvironments can
provide unparalleled and previously unavailable diagnostic insights
enabling oncologists to treat patients more effectively and also at
the right time.”
About the Avatar System
The Avatar system, including a benchtop and stackable instrument
and consumables for a number of applications, enables a new
generation of cell-based assays by allowing for complete control of
key physiological conditions found in the microenvironments of
cells, including settings for pressure, oxygen, temperature and CO2
levels. In addition to enabling culture of difficult samples such
as tumor biopsies and primary samples, the system overcomes
limitations of traditional cell culture to generate results that
exhibit the phenotypic, genomic and proteomic characteristics of
the native sample.
For more information, visit www.xcellbio.com.
About Xcell Biosciences, Inc.
Xcell Biosciences, Inc., is developing revolutionary products
and workflows for life science and translational research that
reproduce physiologically relevant conditions to enable more
meaningful, biologically relevant experiments. The company’s tools
empower scientists to obtain accurate and actionable results in
important fields such as cancer research, biomarker discovery, lead
candidate selection and optimization, stem cell research and
regenerative medicine, and immunotherapy drug development. Xcell’s
first product, the Avatar™ system, opens the door for a new
generation of cell-based assays by allowing for complete control of
key physiological conditions found in cellular microenvironments.
In addition to enabling culture of difficult samples such as tumor
biopsies and primary samples, the system overcomes limitations of
traditional cell culture to generate results that exhibit the
phenotypic, genomic and proteomic characteristics of the native
sample. Based in San Francisco, Xcell Biosciences has raised more
than $5M from Viking Global, DST Global, Lightspeed Venture
Partners, and HBM Genomics, as well as a number of other angel
investors and funds.
View source
version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160922005319/en/
For Xcell Biosciences:Bioscribe, Inc.Nicole Litchfield,
1-415-793-6468nicole@bioscribe.com