CAPIO BIOSCIENCES, INC. — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: NCI

Description

Cancer immunotherapythe utilization of the patientsown immune system to treat cancerhas emerged as a powerful new strategy in cancer treatmentAn unmet need in cancer immunotherapy treatment has been the lack of a predictive biomarker for treatment responseImagingwhich has been thegold standardfor monitoring treatment response is unreliable in immunotherapy due to the pseudoprogression phenomenonAn immunotherapy biomarker will enable more personalized cancer treatmentresponse adaptive treatment and cost reductionOne potential approach for the development of such predictive biomarkers is to utilize circulating tumor cellsCTCsHoweverthe currently available systems such as CellSearchand other competing technologies do not have high enough sensitivityCapio Biosciences has developed a novel biomimetic platform that is highly sensitive and specific in CTC captureThe tumor cell capture efficiency of the platformwhich is trademarked as CapioCytewas shown to increase by up tofold via a biomimetic combination of E selectin induced cell rolling and dendrimer mediated multivalent bindingWe have preliminary clinical data from various cohorts demonstrating that we can reliably capture high number of CTCs using CapioCyteTo translate our technologywe aim to optimize our CapioCyteimmunotherapy chip designThis proposed SBIR Phase I study will progress throughspecific aimsIn Aimwe will prepare and compare various CapioCytecapture surfaces with different combinations of capture agents to engineer an optimized chip using a series of cell linesSurface chemistries will also be developed to achieve controlled immobilization of the capture agents and facile isolation of CTCsdetachment from the capture surfacesenabling post capture analysesIn Aimthe optimized CapioCyteprototype will be validated using human blood samples from cancer patients receiving immunotherapyThe sensitivity and specificity of the CapioCyteprototype will be measured and compared to those of CellSearchThe captured CTCs will then be the subject of post capture analysissuch as RNA sequencingin addition to post staining of the captured CTCs with aPDLand pThese efforts will reveal the relationship among kinetic changes of CTC countsoncogene target expression of CTCsand clinical outcomesUpon successful completionwe will have developed a biomarker for cancer immunotherapy responseSuch a biomarker can ultimately enable personalized and response adaptive immunotherapy cancer treatment Cancer immunotherapythe utilization of the patientsown immune system to treat cancerhas emerged as a powerful new strategy in cancer treatmentAn unmet need in cancer immunotherapy treatment has been the lack of a predicative biomarker for treatment responseOur application aims to address this challenge and develop a predicative biomarker for cancer immunotherapy therapy using circulating tumor cell capture technology