A Medical Device Daily
BrainLAB (Westchester, Illinois) reported unveiling its portfolio for clinical oncology at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO; Alexandria, Virginia) in Atlanta.
The iPlan software platform makes holistic patient treatment information available across all hospital departments. Providing software and networking capabilities, iPlan simulates alternative cancer treatment approaches such as radiotherapy, surgery or local drug delivery and helps to identify, implement and monitor the best approach for each individual patient, according to BrainLAB.
For radiotherapy, BrainLab describes Novalis as a comprehensive treatment system that shapes beams of focused high-energy radiation from different angles to deliver noninvasive, precise radiosurgery treatments that are designed to shrink or control the growth of tumor cells. The company said it is the only system on the market for single, multi-, hypo- and hyper-fractionation; stereotactic IMRT and both frameless and frame-based treatments.
For minimally-invasive surgery, BrainLAB offers a range of solutions including BrainSUITE, a fully integrated, workflow-optimized, and versatile operating room combining image-guided surgery, intra-operative MRI, visualization and data management technology.
In the field of chemotherapy, BrainLAB unveiled iPlan Flow. iPlan Flow uses MRI to render an individual 3-D map of the patient's brain in order to assess where and how medications need to be infused in order to reach specific cells within the brain.
Among study reports at ASCO:
• ChondroGene (Toronto) reported that two abstracts were presented at the ASCO meeting offering preliminary results of the company's work in identifying blood-based biomarkers for the detection of colorectal and prostate cancer.
The abstracts demonstrate, the company said, “the power and flexibility of the Sentinel Principle, ChondroGene's proprietary approach to identify molecular signatures of disease in blood.”
The first abstract, “Novel blood biomarker panel detects human colorectal cancer” reports results from a study that identified gene signatures in whole blood which were then used to identify and characterize a set of biomarkers able to differentiate patients with colorectal cancer from controls. It was authored by ChondroGene scientists and researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Lam Wah Ee Hospital (Penang, Malaysia), the 2nd Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University (Hangzhou, China) and Anhui Medical University (Hefei, China).
In the study, 31 blood RNA samples were profiled to identify differentially expressed genes. Quantitative real-time PCR was then used to identify subsets of genes using 115 samples and logistic regression was applied to assess the ability of combinations of specific transcripts to distinguish colorectal cancer from controls. This analysis yielded a combination of five genes that achieved sensitivity of 98% and specificity of 51% in the training set.
This five-gene combination was then used in a blinded test of 83 samples, achieving sensitivity of 95% and specificity of 42%, demonstrating an effective blood-based approach for the detection of colorectal cancer.
The second abstract, “Blood-based biomarkers for detecting aggressive prostate cancer at time of biopsy,” was authored by ChondroGene researchers/collaborators at the University of Toronto. This study identified a set of blood biomarkers that was able to distinguish patients with aggressive forms of prostate cancer from controls.
A two-stage study was conducted, with the first stage focusing on gene discovery among 47 patients who underwent a prostate biopsy for prostate cancer. Included in the study were 16 patients diagnosed with aggressive forms of prostate cancer defined as having a histologic grade of Gleason Score 7 or more, and 31 patients with no evidence of cancer at biopsy.
The second stage was a validation study on samples from 108 patients using quantitative real time PCR methods. Logistic regression was used to assess the ability of combinations of specific transcripts to distinguish cancers from controls.
A combination of four genes resulting from the second stage of the investigation discriminated the cases of aggressive forms of prostate cancer from controls with a sensitivity of 90% and specificity of 53%. The performance of PSA (4 ng/mL cut-off) in the same 108 sample set distinguished the two groups with 91% sensitivity and 13% specificity. When used in combination with PSA however, these 4 blood-based biomarkers were synergistic, achieving sensitivity of 90% and specificity of 70%, demonstrating improved overall accuracy in identifying patients with aggressive prostate cancer at biopsy.
K. Wayne Marshall, MD, PhD, president and CEO of ChondroGene, said, “The results presented at ASCO were preliminary data. Since submitting the abstracts, we have made substantial further progress. Our current efforts are focused on the development and continued optimization of design and performance parameters for our lead product, ColonSentry, for the detection of colorectal cancer from a simple blood sample.”
• Ciphergen Biosystems (Fremont, California) said that results of a multi-center study showed that all seven biomarkers it tested demonstrated statistically significant power to differentiate ovarian cancer patients from women with benign disease, and most biomarkers had p<0.00001.
An index derived from the seven markers demonstrated improved specificity for discriminating ovarian cancer from benign pelvic masses, as well as for the detection of early-stage cancer.