ImmunoCellular Therapeutics, Ltd. (OTCBB: IMUC), a clinical-stage biotechnology company that is developing immune-based therapies for the treatment of brain and other cancers, announced today results from its pilot study evaluating the cancer detection abilities of one of its lead monoclonal antibody product candidates, ICT-109. Data from this study demonstrated that ICT-109 had a statistically significant ability to discriminate between cancerous and non-cancerous samples, suggesting the potential to detect pancreatic and lung cancer in plasma and serum study sets.
The study used reverse phase micro array technology to determine serum and plasma expression levels of glycosylated CEA, and was performed in collaboration with Dr. Emanuel Petricoin at George Mason University. Dr. Petricoin is a renowned microbiologist who was a senior investigator with the US FDA’s Office of Cell Tissue and Gene Therapies in the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research earlier in his career. He and his colleague, Lance Liotta, invented the Reverse Phase Protein Microarray technology.
Researchers at George Mason University investigated the ability of ICT-109 to detect pancreatic and lung cancer by binding specifically to glycosylated epitopes of CEA-CAM6 and CEA-CAM5, two common markers that are overly expressed in a majority of cancers. Glycosylated CEA is highly expressed in patients with pancreatic and lung cancers, and can be used to detect these cancers using a direct blood test.