Angle PLC Announces Secured Contract From Pharma Services Customer

Additional contract for a new clinical trial

Parsortix system to be used for longitudinal monitoring of patients with unresectable solid tumours

GUILDFORD, UK / ACCESSWIRE / June 22, 2022 / ANGLE plc (AIM:AGL)(OTCQX:ANPCY), a world-leading liquid biopsy company, is delighted to announce that the Company has secured an additional contract with its first large-scale pharma services customer. The customer, a pharma company with numerous cancer drugs under development and revenues exceeding US$1 billion per annum, has again selected ANGLE's Parsortix^® system to undertake longitudinal monitoring (i.e. before, during and after drug intervention) of patients with certain unresectable solid tumours in a new Phase Ib dose-escalation study using its investigational drug in combination with immuno-oncology agents. Once the recommended dose has been determined, the study will progress to an expansion stage.

The additional contract is expected to be worth up to US$1.2 million over a multi-year period. The new work relates to the successful progression of one of the smaller Phase I studies in the original contract announced in April 2021. This dose-escalation study, with expansion stage, is scheduled to begin in the next few weeks and the customer expects to provide samples from each patient for analysis by ANGLE at as many as seven separate timepoints. As with the previous contracts, ANGLE anticipates that this further Phase Ib study, if successful, could progress to larger Phase II studies and, potentially, much larger Phase III studies.

As with the original contract, the agreed services cover the capture, harvest and analysis of circulating tumour cells (CTCs) and CTC clusters. Samples will be shipped from multiple study centres to ANGLE's clinical laboratories in the UK and United States for analysis using the Parsortix system.

ANGLE Founder and Chief Executive, Andrew Newland, commented:

"We have previously indicated that we expect repeat business from our pharma services customers. We believe that the Parsortix liquid biopsy has particular advantages in capturing intact cancer cells, including mesenchymal cells and clusters, and provides the opportunity for longitudinal testing in a clinical setting. This is not possible with tissue biopsy.

The additional contract from our first large-scale pharma customer, as well as ongoing discussions with multiple potential new customers, validates ANGLE's belief that longitudinal monitoring of CTCs is a highly attractive proposition for the pharma industry looking for new insights in cancer drug trials.

We are very pleased with the increasing levels of interest from pharma companies in our CTC analysis services following FDA clearance of the Parsortix system and look forward to announcing further progress on the expansion of this important business area for ANGLE in due course."

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Notes for editors

About ANGLE plc www.angleplc.com

ANGLE is a world leading liquid biopsy company with sample-to-answer solutions. ANGLE's proven patent protected platforms include a circulating tumor cell (CTC) harvesting technology known as the Parsortix^® system and a downstream analysis system for cost effective, highly multiplexed analysis of nucleic acids and proteins.

ANGLE's Parsortix^® system is FDA cleared for its intended use in metastatic breast cancer and is currently the first and only FDA cleared medical device to harvest intact circulating cancer cells from blood.

Intended use

The Parsortix^® PC1 system is an in vitro diagnostic device intended to enrich circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from peripheral blood collected in K₂EDTA tubes from patients diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. The system employs a microfluidic chamber (a Parsortix cell separation cassette) to capture cells of a certain size and deformability from the population of cells present in blood. The cells retained in the cassette are harvested by the Parsortix PC1 system for use in subsequent downstream assays. The end user is responsible for the validation of any downstream assay. The standalone device, as indicated, does not identify, enumerate or characterize CTCs and cannot be used to make any diagnostic/prognostic claims for CTCs, including monitoring indications or as an aid in any disease management and/or treatment decisions.

The Parsortix system enables a liquid biopsy (a simple blood test) to be used to provide the circulating metastatic breast cancer cells to the user in a format suitable for multiple types of downstream analyses. The system is based on a microfluidic device that captures cells based on a combination of their size and compressibility. The system is epitope independent and can capture all phenotypes of CTCs (epithelial, mesenchymal and EMTing CTCs) as well as CTC clusters in a viable form (alive). CTCs harvested from the system enable a complete picture of a cancer to be seen; as being an intact cell they allow DNA, RNA and protein analysis as well as cytological and morphological examination and may provide comparable analysis to a tissue biopsy in metastatic breast cancer. Because CTC analysis is a non-invasive process, unlike tissue biopsy, it can be repeated as often as needed. This is important because cancer develops and changes over time and there is a clear medical need for up-to-date information on the status of a patient's tumor. In addition, the live CTCs harvested by the Parsortix system can be cultured, which offers the potential for testing tumor response to drugs outside the patient.

The Parsortix technology is the subject of 26 granted patents in Europe, the United States, China, Australia, Canada, India, Japan and Mexico with three extensive families of patents are being progressed worldwide.

In the United States, the Parsortix^® PC1 system has received a Class II Classification from FDA for use with metastatic breast cancer patients. FDA clearance is seen as the global gold standard. ANGLE's Parsortix system is the first ever FDA cleared system for harvesting CTCs for subsequent analysis. ANGLE has applied the IVD CE Mark to the same system for the same intended use in Europe.

ANGLE has also completed two separate 200 subject clinical studies under a program designed to develop an ovarian cancer pelvic mass triage test, with the results showing best in class accuracy (AUC-ROC) of 95.1%. The pelvic mass triage assay has undergone further refinement and optimisation and a 200 patient clinical verification study has now completed enrolment.

ANGLE's technology for the multiplex evaluation of proteins and nucleic acids of all types is called the HyCEAD^TM platform and is based on a patented flow through array technology. It provides for low cost, highly multiplexed, rapid and sensitive capture of targets from a wide variety of sample types. A proprietary chemistry approach (the HyCEAD method) allows for the capture and amplification of over 100 biomarkers simultaneously in a single reaction. The HyCEAD system is extremely sensitive and is ideal for measuring gene expression and other markers directly from Parsortix harvests and was used in the ovarian cancer pelvic mass triage test to achieve best in class accuracy (AUC-ROC) of 95.1%.

ANGLE's proprietary technologies can be combined to provide automated, sample-to-answer results in both centralised laboratory and point-of-use cartridge formats.

ANGLE has established formal collaborations with world-class cancer centres and major corporates such as Abbott, Philips and QIAGEN, and works closely with leading CTC translational research customers. These Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) are working to identify applications with medical utility (clear benefit to patients), and to secure clinical data that demonstrates that utility in patient studies. The body of evidence as to the benefits of the Parsortix system is growing rapidly from our own clinical studies in metastatic breast cancer and ovarian cancer and also from KOLs with 62 peer-reviewed publications and numerous publicly available posters from 31 independent cancer centres, available on our website.

ANGLE has established clinical services laboratories in the UK and the United States to accelerate commercialisation of the Parsortix system and act as demonstrators to support product development. The laboratories offer services globally to pharmaceutical and biotech customers for use of Parsortix in cancer drug trials and, once the laboratories are accredited and tests validated, will provide Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs) for patient management.

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SOURCE: ANGLE plc