NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Personalis said today that it has signed a research agreement with FLX Bio to use its universal cancer immunogenomics ImmunoID Next platform to evaluate therapy-related changes in tumors of advanced cancer patients treated with FLX Bio's FLX475 drug.
As part of the collaboration, FLX Bio will apply the Personalis assay in a patient cohort that is part of a Phase I/II clinical trial evaluating FLX475, a CCR4 antagonist, as monotherapy or in combination with pembrolizumab.
Personalis' ImmunoID Next platform analyzes about 20,000 genes on the DNA and RNA level, thus offering a multidimensional view of the tumor and tumor microenvironment from a single sample.
FLX Bio will use the platform to compare pre- and post-treatment tumor biopsy samples, as well as to determine levels of several inflammation-related and immune cell type-related markers in its Phase II clinical studies of FLX475.
"Using the ImmunoID Next platform for our FLX475 studies will help confirm its mechanism of action and demonstrate that inhibiting the CCR4 receptor with FLX475 blocks the migration of regulatory T-cells into tumors," FLX Bio President and CEO Brian Wong said in a statement. "We may be able to show that FLX475 – by blocking regulatory T-cells – decreases immune suppression and stimulates an immune response against cancer cells in the tumor microenvironment."
Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
"ImmunoID Next is ideal for applications such as … maximizing the data generated from a single tumor sample with the goal of characterizing the complex interplay between the tumor cells and immune cells of the tumor microenvironment," Personalis CEO John West said in a statement. "The complexity and dynamic nature of the tumor-immune interactions demands that combinatorial biomarkers will likely be required to most effectively predict responders and non-responders to these therapies."