The liquid biopsy platform is being used to track treatment responses and disease burden among newly diagnosed, locally advanced breast cancer patients
Exai Bio’s RNA-based liquid biopsy platform will measure the treatment response in a larger cohort of patients and across more therapies. (Credit: National Cancer Institute on Unsplash)
Exai Bio has signed a collaboration agreement with Quantum Leap Healthcare Collaborative (QLHC) to expand the use of its RNA-based liquid biopsy platform in the I-SPY 2 trial in breast cancer.
Quantum Leap Healthcare Collaborative, which is a charitable organisation in the US, has been offering operational, financial, and regulatory oversight to the breast cancer trial.
The liquid biopsy platform of Exai Bio is being used for tracking treatment responses and disease burden among women with newly diagnosed, locally advanced breast cancer.
The expanded agreement between the parties is backed by the trial’s early results using Exai Bio’s platform, which showed that orphan noncoding RNAs (oncRNAs) are an important predictor of patient outcomes.
I-SPY 2 is a platform trial designed to offer a regulatory framework for assessing various therapeutic treatment arms for women whose breast cancer is newly diagnosed and locally advanced.
The liquid biopsy platform of Exai Bio is based on the discovery of oncRNAs, a new class of small ribonucleic acid (RNA) biomarkers that have high sensitivity and specificity.
According to Exai Bio, the next phase of the partnership will measure the treatment response in a larger cohort of patients and across more therapies in the I-SPY 2 trial.
The Palo Alto, California-based liquid biopsy company said that a larger cohort will further support the evidence for oncRNAs as a predictor of clinical outcomes.
Exai Bio CEO Pat Arensdorf said: “We are delighted to extend our participation in such a groundbreaking trial, and to continue to demonstrate that our RNA-based approach can more effectively inform care decisions in a larger cohort of patients and across multiple therapies.
“Our goal is to provide a novel tool for biopharmaceutical companies to include in clinical trials to monitor early therapy response and efficacy, predict end-points, and enrich patient populations in an effective manner.”
The company’s platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect cancer-specific patterns based on its catalogue of hundreds of thousands of oncRNAs.
Last year, Exai Bio presented data that supported the use of its RNA-based liquid biopsy platform in the early detection and monitoring of colorectal cancer.