ApoCell To Conduct Studies In Support Of Novel Pfizer Cancer Drug Trial

Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Also Included In: Clinical Trials / Drug Trials
Article Date: 28 Jan 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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ApoCell Inc. has been engaged by Pfizer, Inc. to support a Phase 1 clinical trial being conducted in three sites in the U.S. and abroad. ApoCell will use its target expression profile (TEP™) technology along with immunohistochemistry to generate data to select those patients most likely to benefit from the drug and will then process patient samples to quantify the pharmacodynamic activity of the new drug.

A new paradigm in clinical trial design

Selecting patients for clinical trials based on predicting drug response can help bring cancer drugs to market sooner. Many new cancer drugs target specific parts of cancer cells or related biochemical processes. Although they are very powerful and much better tolerated, scientists have found that individual response to these agents can vary widely. A diagnostic test that indicates whether a patient will respond to treatment is very promising.

Diagnostic biomarkers - transforming biology into information

Cancer biomarkers are the biological "neon signs" that advertise the presence or absence of cancer cells. A very complex disorder, cancer manifests itself in many ways. Cancer biomarkers must therefore distinguish and detect the presence or future presence of a specific malignancy with a high degree of accuracy.

Dr. Darren Davis, ApoCell's CEO, comments, "We have isolated and measured cancer biomarker intensity for ten years using advanced technologies such as lasers. We can detect and measure very small changes in protein expression and have shown that protein biomarker expression correlates with clinical outcome and can be used to predict the efficacy of cancer drug therapies. We are very excited to work with Pfizer on this project."

About ApoCell Inc.

ApoCell Inc. was founded in 2004 to commercialize biomarker technologies that were developed at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. This proprietary method monitors the effectiveness of cancer drugs by measuring biomarker expression patterns in tumor cells. The company has conducted 38 clinical studies with over 11,000 specimens on 28 investigational drugs and eight FDA-approved cancer drugs.

ApoCell Inc.