Oxford BioDynamics Plc (LON: OBD), a biotechnology company focused on the discovery and development of epigenetic biomarkers for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry, has announced that data yielded by application of its 3D genome architecture technology platform, EpiSwitch™, will be presented at The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer’s 34th Annual Meeting. The poster presentations indicate that the biomarkers identified by EpiSwitch, using blood samples from patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors, provide information that can be used to understand various disease states and has the potential to shed light on the impact of treatment to improve clinical outcomes. The posters were co-authored with collaborating scientists from EMD Serono (the biopharmaceutical business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in the US and Canada), Pfizer, Oxford Biodynamics and the Mayo Clinic.
· Data from study of EpiSwitch™ Suggest Independent Predictive Power of the 3D Genome Architecture Technology Platform in Immuno-Oncology
· Posters presented at Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual Meeting co-authored by scientists from Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, Pfizer and Mayo Clinic
In the studies, researchers profiled patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) or melanoma treated with avelumab (an anti-PD-L1 antibody), pembrolizumab (an anti-PD-1 antibody), or pembrolizumab in combination with a non-platinum chemotherapeutic agent, and generated models to differentiate responders from non-responders using machine learning methods. All computational analyses for identification of classification models was performed by Oxford Biodynamics.
The findings are being presented as part of the following two posters:
· (P142) “Development and Validation of Baseline Predictive Biomarkers for Response to Avelumab in second-line (2L) non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)”*
· (P143) “Development and Validation of Baseline Predictive Biomarkers for Response to Immuno-Checkpoint Treatments in the context of Multi-Line and Multi-therapy Cohorts using EpiSwitch™ Epigenetic Profiling”
Findings from both posters indicate that the chromosome conformation signatures identified retrospectively by EpiSwitch represent strong systemic cellular network deregulations associated with differences in clinical phenotypes and outcomes. Full results are being submitted for publication.
“These findings show that immuno-oncology biomarker development with EpiSwitch yielded robust exclusion of non-responders across indications and combinations, provided asset-specific classifiers with high PPV, and may enable IO drug development programs to advance with smaller patient cohorts,” said Alexandre Akoulitchev, Director and Chief Scientific Officer of Oxford Biodynamics. “While this initial single-arm study design doesn’t permit differentiation between the prognostic and predictive values of the EpiSwitch classifiers, the rationale for a blinded, comparator arm test is compelling. The ability to stratify patients based on their genomic architecture to reduce the risk, cost and time to market for therapeutic development programmes would be a game changer in immune-oncology.”
The EpiSwitch research was funded by Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany as part of an alliance with Pfizer.
*Avelumab is not approved for the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer or melanoma.
