Parsortix Inc (Prenatal diagnostics - 76% holding)

Parsortix has developed the first ever non-invasive testing platform for the unborn baby. Pregnant women have a very small number of their baby's cells circulating in their blood; at most one foetal cell for 500 million maternal cells. Parsortix has developed a separation device, which can isolate intact foetal cells in maternal blood (as opposed to merely DNA fragments) when only 1.5ml of maternal blood is flowed through the device.

At present, testing for early definitive diagnosis for the chromosomal abnormalities associated with Down's, Turner and Klinefelter syndromes, as well as other disorders due to genetic abnormalities such as spina bifida is limited to high risk category patients where an invasive procedure such as amniocentesis or chorionic villi sampling can be justified.

In the US market alone there are currently 375,000 such invasive tests undertaken per annum leaving the remaining 2.2 million pregnancies with no advance warning of potential problems. If the invasive test can be replaced with a simple and comparatively inexpensive maternal blood test, it is considered that the procedure will be widely adopted with the potential for 2.6 million tests per annum in the US alone. The current cost of the amniocentesis procedure in the US is around $1,200. The Parsortix technique is expected to substantially reduce this cost.

Parsortix is currently exploring the potential for a partnership with a major corporate and has actively engaged with a number of multi-national companies with that in mind. The ideal corporate partner will have substantial financial resources and own diagnostic technologies which can be bundled with Parsortix's cell capture technology to provide a complete solution for pre-natal diagnostics.

Having proven its separation technology, Parsortix has extensively protected the intellectual property for a range of cell separation applications in addition to foetal cells including stem cells, metastatic cancer cells and bacteria.

Background

Parsortix Inc was founded by ANGLE in 2006 to commercialise technology designed to separate objects at the micro level.  As a first application of this technology, Parsortix has developed a device that will assist in pre-natal diagnostics.  This device will enable, without the trauma associated with amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling (CVS), the collection of foetal cells from the maternal bloodstream for the detection of Down’s syndrome and other diseases associated with chromosomal abnormalities.  The technology may also have applications in bone marrow transplant therapy during cancer treatment.

This technology was developed to aid in the collection of cells for genetic analysis.  However, it was recognised that the technology may provide an approach to the collection of foetal cells from maternal blood.  Parsortix has demonstrated that foetal cells can be isolated from maternal blood using this technology.  Future prenatal diagnostic technologies will also be able to use these cells for markers of genetic diseases.  The technology is easy to use, and should provide a cost effective way to separate cells, not just for prenatal diagnosis, but for other diagnostic and therapeutic applications.  ANGLE identified this technology through its collaboration with the Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania.