Chronix Biomedical, Inc., a developer of blood-based molecular diagnostics, presented positive data from a blinded proof of concept clinical study, assessing the utility of tumour cell-free DNA (cfDNA) as a predictor of therapeutic response to chemotherapy in metastatic cancers, at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2016 held at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

The poster presentation at AACR describes the work conducted by independent oncologists in a blinded study to evaluate Chronix Biomedical’s genomic copy number instability score (CNI) and its potential to predict a patient’s response to cytotoxic chemotherapy.

The study was designed to assess CNI performance against RECIST 1.1, an industry standard for the assessment of treatment outcomes, and CNI’s effectiveness in multiple tumour types. CNI analysis correctly stratified patients as either responders or non-responders to chemotherapy in 92 per cent (22 of 24 patients) of cases when compared to RECIST, demonstrating strong concordance. Encouragingly, CNI also stratified patients in five different tumour types (lung cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, pancreatic cancer, colorectal cancer and oesophageal cancer), demonstrating that this new test may have broad clinical utility.

Dr Nick Plowman, senior consultant physician and clinical oncologist to St. Bartholomew Hospital and The Hospital for Sick Children, London, UK, and a scientific advisor to Chronix Biomedical, said, “A simple blood test, such as this, could reliably and quickly identify patients who will respond to chemotherapy. Clinicians could then make a more informed choice as to the most appropriate therapeutic option, while allowing healthcare providers to better allocate scarce healthcare resources.”

Chronix Biomedical’s CEO, Dr Howard B. Urnovitz, commented, “We are pleased to be able to present encouraging data supportive of copy number instability as a predictor of chemotherapy treatment response at this prestigious scientific meeting. This initial data demonstrates that CNI has the potential to identify responders and non-responders in five different tumor types and predict response to chemotherapy earlier and less invasively than current methods.  These results give us the confidence to continue to expand into other treatment modalities, additional cancers and larger studies as we build our clinical data and progress in the development of this important diagnostic tool.”