NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Biocept announced today that it is initiating a new study in collaboration with MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, using its liquid biopsy technology to evaluate drug resistance biomarkers in patients being treated with EGFR inhibitors or chemotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer.
Conducted at the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center under the direction of Professor Giuseppe Giaccone, the study will use Biocept's combined circulating tumor cell and cell-free tumor DNA platform to detect biomarkers such as EGFR, MET, ALK, and BRAF.
Biocept expects that data from the study will provide evidence to show its blood-based testing is clinically useful in identifying the emergence of resistance to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors, and can help guide associated treatment decisions.
"Treatment with currently approved targeted TKI therapies have known benefits for patients with various EGFR activating mutations; however, nearly all of these patients will eventually develop resistance to their therapies, which results in disease progression," Veena Singh, Biocept senior vice president and senior medical director, said in a statement.
"Current standard of care is to use tumor biopsies by invasive surgical techniques or interventional radiology to both re-stratify patients with NSCLC when signs of progression are identified and to monitor these patients for key mechanisms of resistance," added Giaccone. "These biopsies have a quantifiable rate of complications and risk. The ability to identify resistance mechanisms through blood-based liquid biopsy monitoring allows for detection and analysis without the need to obtain more tissue."
Biocept also has several other ongoing research collaborations, including another NSCLC study with the San Diego Moores Cancer Center and two collaborations focused on breast cancer with Baylor College of Medicine and the Sarah Cannon Research Institute.