June 12, 2020
Creatv Microtech, is a privately-held biotechnology company has pioneered a blood test to predict treatment response in patients with stage II-III NSCLC treated with chemoradiation therapy (CRT) and consolidated immunotherapy.
Clinical data presented at the ASCO 2020 virtual annual meeting shows the ability to predict which NSCLC patients will benefit from anti-PD-L1/PD-1 immunotherapies. “We are delighted to present a method to stratify patients responding to immunotherapy by a single tube of blood collected after completion of CRT,” said Dr. Cha-Mei Tang, CEO of Creatv Microtech. “Early identification of patients that do not respond to immunotherapy will reduce unnecessary patient suffering from ineffective and costly treatment, allowing patients to proceed to alternative therapies.” Currently, no other blood test can predict immunotherapy treatment response for lung cancer.
Creatv’s poster, Sequential Monitoring of Circulating Stromal Cells from Blood is Predictive of Progression in NSCLC patients undergoing anti-PD-L1 Therapy after Definitive Chemoradiation Therapy, Abstract ID: 3051, highlights the performance of the LifeTracDxTM test. In a completely novel concept, the test analyzes patients’ immune response to the presence of cancer, isolating stromal cells from cancer sites that have migrated into the bloodstream. Creatv demonstrated that a particular subtype of circulating stromal cell, named Cancer-Associated Macrophage-Like cells (CAMLs), can be used in patients with cancer to rapidly track response to new therapies. CAMLs are phagocytic myeloid cells derived from the patient’s immunological response to inflammation caused by active malignancy.
We have previously shown that in solid tumors, patients with CAMLs larger than 50µm in size have poorer prognosis, with shorter progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). In this poster, Creatv Microtech presents the findings from a two-year single blind prospective study of 104 NSCLC patients with Stage II-III or with locally recurrent disease treated with standard CRT, followed by anti-PD-L1 or PD-1 therapies (i.e. durvalumab, pembrolizumab, etc.). Blood draws were taken at baseline, directly after CRT completion and after approximately 2.5 months of anti-PD-L1/PD-1 therapy. The LifeTracDxTM tests at both time points were able to predict good PFS and OS by identifying patients responding well to the immunotherapy based on CAML size.
