December 20, 2021

OncoHost Collaborates with Lung Biobank Heidelberg to Discover Lung Cancer Biomarkers

Original source here.

Collaboration Aims to Refine Patient Stratification for Immunotherapy-Treated Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) Patients

OncoHost, a global leader in next-generation precision oncology for improved personalized cancer therapy, recently announced a research collaboration with Lung Biobank Heidelberg, a member of BioMaterialBank Heidelberg (BMBH) and the German Center for Lung Research (DZL).

The collaboration involves the systematic collection and integration of data to refine patient stratification and identify novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets, primarily for immunotherapy-treated non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. It comes as OncoHost continues to expand its multicenter clinical trial, PROPEHTIC. OncoHost will work with Lung Biobank of Thoraxklinik-Heidelberg to collect blood samples, analyze them and then share the data, with the goal of improving the methods of patient stratification in lung cancer beyond the general biomarkers currently being used.

“Availability of blood samples at baseline and throughout treatment is increasingly important for patient management in non-small-cell lung cancer, especially for the application of targeted therapies, such as immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment,” said Dr. Thomas Muley, head of Lung Biobank Heidelberg. “Collaborating with OncoHost on this crucial project will allow us to provide improved personalized oncology care for lung cancer patients on a global scale.”

PROphet® is a first-of-its-kind diagnostic platform that combines proteomic analysis with AI to predict patient response to immunotherapy and identify resistance associated processes, providing clinicians with potential combination strategies to overcome treatment resistance. The platform employs high-throughput protein analysis technology, scanning over 7,000 proteins in a patient’s plasma, combined with proprietary bioinformatic and machine learning-based algorithms to identify proteomic patterns that can better predict patient outcomes. PROphet® also identifies potential drug targets to advance development of novel therapeutic strategies. Studies have shown PROphet® to have over 90% accuracy in predicting how patients with NSCLC and melanoma will respond to various therapies.

“The more research collaborations we establish, the deeper our understanding of cancer biology and host response in cancer patients becomes,” said Dr. Ofer Sharon, CEO of OncoHost. “By working with Lung Biobank Heidelberg to share biomaterial and clinical data, we aim to identify diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic biomarkers for NSCLC patients. We look forward to sharing continued positive results in predicting response to immunotherapy and providing clinicians with insights on potential future interventions.”