Abnova Signup More Cancer Clinics and Hospitals and Expands its Circulating Tumor Cells and Precision Medicine Business in Japan

Neihu, Taiwan (January 9, 2020)

Abnova announced today the completion of service agreements with Kobe, Niigata, and Yamaguchi University Hospitals, and TGC, Fukuoka Medical, and Aoki Yumi Medical Clinics to further expand its circulating tumor cells (CTC) and precision medicine business through a wholly-subsidiary Abnova Diagnostics in Japan. Prior to this, Abnova has setup contract services with National Cancer Center and Kanagawa Cancer Hospitals. Currently, there are about 300 cancer clinics in Japan focusing on alternative cancer treatments for patients who have failed guideline therapies or are seeking complementary therapies outside the support of mainstream hospitals. Abnova assists these patients by measuring their CTC numbers before and after treatment and throughout the course of the disease, providing an real-time index of treatment response, residual disease, remission, recurrence, and metastasis.

Current alternative and complementary therapies include blood ozone, hyperthermia, photodynamic, photoimmunotherapy, and non-gene modified cell therapies. As cancer progresses and patients become more debilitated, their disease become more difficult to monitor and evaluate for objective response to new therapies. CTC is a non-invasive, liquid biopsy based on isolation of tumor cells from patient’s peripheral blood. Abnova uses a proprietary cell-surface vimentin (CSV) antibody and a patented microfluidic platform to capture CTC during progressive and late-stage disease, which have universally lost EpCAM protein in their tumor. Hence, the use of the traditional EpCAM biomarker and CTC isolation techniques would not useful diagnostically for these patients.

Besides CTC, Abnova is also expanding its clinical services including circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), FFPE tissue DNA, and hereditary cancer germline testing. The latter test involves measuring a prostate cancer patient’s BRCA1, BRCA2, ATM, PALB2, and FANCA germline (not somatic) gene mutations. According to the 2019 NCCN guideline, a positive finding in any of these genes signifies that the patient is eligible for the new PARP inhibitor drug therapy. Family members of high risk patients are also recommended for the test. Abnova is also developing a high sensitivity, non-invasive circulating exosome test to help diagnosing cancer at an earlier stage and tracking for trace of residual disease. Finally, Abnova is awaiting the completion of ACTN4 gene amplification clinical trial as a predictive biomarker for stage I lung adenocarcinoma this first quarter 2020 for submission to Japan PMDA for in vitro diagnostic (IVD) approval.