The biotechnology company Neogap Therapeutics and the cancer diagnostics firm Simsen Diagnostics have initiated a collaboration aimed at improving personalised cancer diagnostics by examining circulating tumor DNA in the blood of patients participating in Neogap’s phase I/II clinical trial. The goal is to develop more precise and effective diagnostic tools for cancer.
What does the partnership mean for cancer patients?
Neogap Therapeutics has previously announced its plans to initiate a phase I/II clinical trial of its personalised cell therapy for the treatment of patients with disseminated colorectal cancer.
Neogap Therapeutics’ pTTL (personalized Trained Tumour Lymphocytes) cell therapy is an immunotherapy treatment designed to treat solid tumors by training the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells using specific altered proteins, so-called neoantigens.
Neogap has commissioned Simsen Diagnostics to measure the level of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in the blood of patients participating in Neogap’s immunotherapy trial. The measures will be taken at several points during the treatment and will be used to evaluate the therapy’s effect by comparing the development and survival of tumour cells over time. Neogap’s proprietary PIOR® software will be used to analyse the data collected during the trial.
The collaboration between the two companies opens up opportunities for developing innovative solutions for clinical diagnostics by leveraging each other’s technologies and expertise. Neogap’s development of a specific PIOR® module for ctDNA analysis is of interest to Simsen Diagnostics, which plans to offer services for clinical diagnostics in the future.
What does this mean for Neogap and Simsen?
“Our tech PIOR® is a safe and regulated system for bioinformatic analysis of sequencing data that is also user-friendly,” commented Samuel Svensson, CEO at Neogap Therapeutics.
“This provides the advantage of securely handling patient data while having the potential for multiple future applications in diagnostics and precision medicine. The collaboration with Simsen is an important step in expanding the PIOR® technology towards future commercialization and out-licensing of PIOR® technology which is very exciting for us.”
“We are excited about the collaboration with Neogap Therapeutics, which allows us to offer our technology for ctDNA analysis to a significant player in the development of personalised cancer immunotherapy. The collaboration also gives us a chance to further develop our tech. By using a quality-assured system for data analysis, we can streamline our analysis and handle more data in less time,” commented Gustav Johansson, CEO of Simsen Diagnostics.
“This deal accelerates our opportunities to become a firm that can offer clinical diagnostics. We know that the collaboration will positively impact our ability to offer innovative solutions.”
