Parsortix Inc (Cancer diagnostics - 90% holding)

Founded by ANGLE in 2006, Parsortix has developed a patented separation platform technology for the isolation of cells in blood, including rare cells which occur in very low numbers, such as one cell within 500 million other cells. 

Using Parsortix’s technology, cells can be differentiated from one another based on their size, shape, deformability, or a combination of these characteristics.  Unlike many cell-separating technologies that rely on antibody binding, the Parsortix technology does not require target cells to express and display antibody-binding protein for separation and, as a result, substantially reduces problems sometimes associated with that approach such as the risk of false positives or false negatives. 

The separation device successfully separates cancer cells added to healthy whole blood.  This “spiked blood” separation is a pre-cursor to isolating cancer cells in cancer patient blood. 

Parsortix has been issued a U.S. Patent Number 7,993,908, entitled “Microstructure for Particle and Cell Separation, Identification, Sorting, and Manipulation”.

This patent is the first in what is expected to be a series of United States and International patents for Parsortix’s proprietary devices and methods for isolating cells from blood and other mixed cell suspensions.  The proprietary devices and methods can be used for a wide range of medical diagnostic applications including, for example, the isolation of disseminated or circulating tumour cells from cancer patient samples and the capture of a developing foetus’ cells from a sample of its mother’s peripheral blood.

ANGLE has confirmed that Parsortix’s patented cell separation device:

• Can be used, on a reproducible basis, to isolate and capture very small numbers of cancer cells from whole blood;
• Appears to efficiently capture all of the cancer cells, avoiding the risk of failing to detect cancer cells present in a blood sample;
• Allows the identification of cancer cells within the device, without requiring a complicated cell extraction process;
• Does not require use of expensive and sometimes unreliable antibody affinity capture technology to isolate the cancer cells.

Use of Parsortix’s separation device to capture circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in cancer patient blood has an immediate market application for research purposes. 

ANGLE has already established discussions with several of the world’s leading cancer research institutes and there is strong interest in such a product, which would not require regulatory approval for use for research purposes.  The target is to establish sales of the product for research purposes as early as mid 2012.

There is also the potential for a corporate partnership with one or more of the largest global medical diagnostic companies and initial discussions have identified encouraging interest in a commercial collaboration.  This will be explored further over the coming months.

In addition to the substantial commercial opportunities available prior to regulatory approval in respect of sales of product for research purposes and corporate partnerships, there are major clinical markets for a simple CTC counting product estimated to exceed $4 billion per annum in the United States market alone.  The target is to seek FDA approval and European CE Mark by mid 2013 enabling sales of product for clinical use in relation to:

• Early detection of cancer;
• Monitoring of cancer patients during treatment; and
• Post-treatment monitoring of cancer patients in remission.

Parsortix’s cancer diagnostic has the potential to meet a key medical requirement and offers an outstanding commercial opportunity for ANGLE.

The separation platform has also been proven and independently verified to isolate intact foetal cells (as opposed to merely DNA fragments) in peripheral maternal blood.  This offers the potential for non-invasive assessment of the health of the unborn child avoiding the current invasive techniques of amniocentesis and chorionic villi sampling and is a second area of application under development.