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Is Precision Therapeutics abandoning ChemoFx?
Precision had announced a new product line called BioSpeciFx to idenify molecular targets within a patient's cell. They use the information generated by BioSpeciFx in combination with ChemoFx to look at both molecular targets as well as the synergistic activity of drug combinations on the entire cell.
BioSpeciFx provides proteomic and genomic information, while ChemoFx takes into account all of the functional characteristics of a tumor. BioSpeciFx cannot work without ChemoFx working. ChemoFx is the backbone.
ChemoFx is a very old technology "cell-growth" assay, not used in cell-based, cell-death private labs in over twenty years. This is the kind of technology ASCO referred to in their infamous 2004 & 2011 tech assessment on CSRAs.
Precision Therapeutics is in no way abandoning ChemoFx, but looking at BioSpeciFx as a complement to the assay.
They run ChemoFx on a population of tumors, say in breast cancer. They identify the responsive, intermediately responsive, and nonresponsive patients. Then take the molecular markers and find out what these patients have in common with respect to 150 different genes.
Then they work on eliminating the genes that are irrelevant. What they get is a multi-gene predictor. It can't work without ChemoFx working. The BioSpeciFx for breast cancer is accurate 85% of the time according to MD Anderson and US Oncology. Each drug will have it's own signature, but it couldn't happen if ChemoFx wasn't accurate. ChemoFx is the backbone of BioSpeciFx.
The thing that is unique about BioSpeciFx, is that the oncologist can pick and choose which markers he wants to see. An ala carte selection if you will. According to Precision Therapeutics, Caris' Target Now does not do this. In fact, they are running 100-120 different markers, and charging for each one, with relatively no clinical relevancy to justify this.
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