OncoVista (OVIT.PK) Reports On Gene Expression Profiling Study In Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) - A Molecular Tool For Therapy Individualization

Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Also Included In: Genetics
Article Date: 24 Nov 2009 - 23:00 PDT

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OncoVista Innovative Therapies, Inc. (Pink Sheets:OVIT), reported that the AdnaTest BreastCancer Select & Detect kit, manufactured by AdnaGen AG (Langenhagen, Germany), is now available for research as well as for pay-out-of-pocket patients in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The research team at the Czech Academy of Science and its spin-off company, TATAA Molecular Diagnostics, have conducted several research efforts with the goal to prove the capability of the CTC test to improve therapeutic decision making in several cancers.

The team has a solid scientific, as well as entrepreneurial, background and enjoys support from established local key opinion leaders within the oncology community. The collaboration with the leading national oncology centers has resulted in several ongoing clinical research projects, many of them supervised by the team's expert, Dr. Katarina Kolostova -- in particular, a gene expression profiling study of 140 breast cancer patients that has shown the potential for therapy individualization. Preliminary results from the project illuminate the evolution of the CTCs in the peripheral blood throughout disease progression.

These findings, if reproducible on a larger patient population, will have a substantial impact on therapy prognostics, Dr. Kolostova says. When established in routine diagnostics, the CTC examination will become a kind of "real-time" biopsy, reflecting the tumor changes in time, thus facilitating better therapeutic decisions. This will lead to improved overall health outcomes in patients while reducing treatment costs. The research team led by Dr. Kolostova is also collaborating with Hoffmann-La Roche on testing the suitability of the minimally invasive CTC test as a surrogate to tissue biopsy in breast cancer patients who have relapsed. The ultimate goal of the Czech TATAA Molecular Diagnostics research team is to convince the expert community as well as the national insurance carriers in the Czech Republic and Slovakia to reimburse the new CTC test or its sub-indication, thus making it available to support decision making in the treatment of the whole cancer patient community.

Source
OncoVista Innovative Therapies, Inc.

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