Aethlon Medical and its diagnostic subsidiary, Exosome Sciences (ESI), announced that ESI researchers have developed and initially validated a lectin-based diagnostic platform that is able to isolate exosome-based biomarkers underlying a broad-spectrum of oncology indications.
Aethlon Medical develops targeted therapeutic devices to address infectious disease, cancer and other life-threatening conditions. ESI develops exosome-based solutions to diagnose and monitor cancer and neurodegenerative disorders.
In the validation studies, ESI researchers provided evidence that their diagnostic platform could identify the presence of cancer in analyzed blood samples from individuals suffering from glioblastoma, metastatic melanoma, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, colorectal cancer and pancreatic cancer.
Beyond the potential implications in diagnosing cancer, ESI researchers believe the high-sensitivity of the platform will allow for effective monitoring of cancer progression and response to corresponding therapies. In oncology indications, the sensitivity of the ESI platform also represents an advancement over the ELLSA assay that was originally developed by Aethlon Medical to quantify changes in circulating exosome load resulting from the administration of Aethlon Hemopurifier therapy.
The Hemopurifier is a first-in-class therapeutic device that targets the rapid elimination of circulating viruses and tumor-secreted exosomes, which in addition to being an oncology biomarker, suppress the immune system and contribute to the spread of metastasis in cancer patients.
"I am immensely proud of the ESI research team as their considerable breadth of collected data reinforces the possibility that a single platform could detect and monitor a wide-range of disease conditions," stated Aethlon Medical CEO Jim Joyce, who also serves as Executive Chairman at ESI. Mr. Joyce founded ESI on behalf of Aethlon Medical shareholders as a means to explore if the lectin-affinity techniques underlying Hemopurifier® therapy could provide a basis for proprietary diagnostic applications.
In the oncology platform validation studies, 198 single point serum specimens (taken at the time of cancer diagnosis) were analyzed from patients with Glioblastoma, Metastatic Melanoma, Breast cancer, Ovarian cancer, Colorectal cancer and Pancreatic cancer, plus 20 age-matched, female and male non-cancer controls. In the studies, the ESI platform was consistently able to differentiate individuals afflicted with cancer as compared to non-cancer controls.