NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cancer patients now have a chance to receive the best chemotherapy treatment for their particular cancer cells the first time, thanks to a test developed by Nashville’s DiaTech Oncology. According to a new article published in Cancer Research, DiaTech’s MiCK™ assay test reliably predicts an individual cancer patient’s response to different chemotherapy options prior to treatment. Use of the assay results in higher response rates, longer times to relapse and longer survivals, along with cost savings and faster time to drug approval for pharmaceutical companies.
DiaTech’s patented MiCK (short for Microculture Kinetic) assay measures apoptosis, or cell death, induced in a patient’s cancer cells by chemotherapy. Tumor cells are exposed to multiple doses of several chemotherapeutic drugs, either as single drugs or in combinations. An algorithm monitors and computes the amounts of cell death caused by each of the drugs and establishes a drug-sensitivity “score” of the patient’s tumor cells. This allows the oncologist to prescribe chemotherapy that would be the most effective against that particular patient’s tumor cells.
DiaTech was invited by Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, to submit an article regarding DiaTech’s MiCK assay. The article highlights the promising results of several completed clinical trials:
- Blinded clinical trials in acute myelocytic leukemia and epithelial ovarian cancer demonstrate higher response rates and longer survival in patients when treatments use drugs showing high apoptosis in the MiCK assay.
- Unblinded trials in multiple tumor types show that the assay will frequently be used by oncologists to determine treatment – more than 60 percent of the time. When used to determine cancer treatment plans, the assay results in higher response rates, longer times to relapse and longer survival.
“The MiCK assay is the only test on the market that reveals to the treating oncologist the most effective chemotherapy for inducing cell death in the malignant cells of a particular patient,” said Dr. Cary Presant, DiaTech’s chief medical officer and professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.
The article also explains how costs of chemotherapy can be reduced with the MiCK assay. In one model using a large self-insured employer, if physicians had used the best chemotherapeutic drug based on the MiCK assay together with appropriate biotherapy, there would have been a 49 percent reduction in chemotherapy costs compared to the cost of chemotherapy actually used. Other savings may occur due to increased generic drug use and single-agent substitution for combination therapies as directed by the assay.
Finally, according to the article, the MiCK assay can help pharmaceutical companies by giving them “the potential ability to more carefully focus clinical trials on patients who have a greater chance of responding to a new drug [and] should shorten the time from drug discovery until FDA approval.”
Dr. Presant concluded, “The MiCK assay can guide use of dominant therapy in individual patients, leading to improved outcomes, including longer survival times and lower cost. As the Cancer Research article shows, the DiaTech assay plays a significant role in both personalized clinical therapy and in more efficient drug development.”
To access the full article, “The Microculture-Kinetic (MiCK) Assay: The Role of a Drug-Induced Apoptosis Assay in Drug Development and Clinical Care,” visit Cancer Research online at http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/
About DiaTech Oncology
DiaTech Oncology is a privately held clinical pathology laboratory company that offers patient-specific chemotherapy testing to help oncologists determine the best cancer treatment plans for their patients. DiaTech utilizes a patented technology called the Microculture Kinetic (MiCK) assay, which measures apoptosis (cell death) induced in a specific patient’s cancer cells by chemotherapy. The only test on the market that evaluates the chemotherapeutic drug effect for a specific patient and can tell which chemotherapy drugs are most effective, the MiCK assay has successfully tested all types of cancer. For more information, call (877) 434-2832. Online: www.diatech-oncology.com