Ex vivo 3D cell culture tech makes ‘true drug response prediction’ possible: Kiyatec
Kiyatec’s prospective 3D-Predict study will validate the company’s EV3D platform for clinical use and investigate the impact on outcomes for cancer patients with epithelial ovarian cancer and recurrent high-grade gliomas.
In this collaboration, Capital Health, and all other sites expected to participate in the 3D-Predict study, will enroll eligible, consented patients.
“They will send us a small fragment of each patient’s resected tumor tissue for analysis at our CLIA-certified central lab where we will conduct patient-specific response profiling using a 12-drug panel for glioblastoma and an 8-drug panel for ovarian cancer,” Matthew Gevaert, CEO of Kiyatec, told us.
“Capital Health and the other participating sites make assay validation possible by enrolling patients into the study,” he added.
Kiyatec intends to enroll 140 glioblastoma and 360 ovarian cancer patients into the study.
The 3D cell culture technology used in the trial was developed to extract living cancer cells from a patient’s tumor and then treat those live cells outside the body with standard of care cancer drugs, Gevaert explained.
The EV3D cell culture platform uses live cancer cells derived from surgical or biopsy tissue to create a patient-specific in vivo-like tumor and immune microenvironment which are used to model and assess responses from both investigational and approved cancer therapies.
Gavaert said, “We can then objectively and quantitatively assess the viability of a patient’s tumor cells as being either responsive or non-responsive to cancer drug therapies of interest. Ex vivo 3D cell culture technology is what makes ‘true drug response prediction’ possible, serving as the only methodology capable of assessing the direct interaction between a patient’s living tumor cells and the cancer therapies of interest.”
Navid Redjal, director of Neurosurgical Oncology at Capital Health, and a lead investigator in the study, stated, “In oncology treatment, and especially for our patients with glioblastoma, being able to predict if a treatment will be successful has the potential to truly change patient care, particularly when time is of the essence.”
Kiyatec’s clinical services business is currently engaged in the validation of clinical assays as investigator-initiated studies in ovarian and breast cancer, glioblastoma, and rare tumors. Its drug development business is working with biopharmaceutical companies to determine response dynamics for investigational drug candidates across the majority of tumor types.
