Caris Life Sciences Awarded Regional Innovation Funding by the NHS (England) to Provide Advanced Tumour Profiling Pilot for Patients with Ovarian and Rare Cancers

BASEL, Switzerland, October 2, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Caris Life Sciences®, a leading biosciences company focused on fulfilling the promise of precision medicine, today announced the launch of a pilot program with the National Health Service (NHS), an initiative that will offer patients with ovarian and rare gynaecological cancers access to comprehensive tumour profiling. Caris' multi-technology tumor profiling service, Caris Molecular Intelligence™, will be made available to approximately 120 women for the first time in England, to tailor cancer treatment plans based on the unique biological characteristics of each patient's cancer.

NHS England will support this evaluation through the Regional Innovation Fund, which aims to facilitate rapid evaluation of healthcare technologies and accelerate the spread of best practice across the health service.  Caris Molecular Intelligence is currently available privately in the UK and via this pilot.

Dr Geoff Hall, Lead Cancer Clinician at Leeds Teaching Hospitals and lead investigator for the pilot, said "We are hugely excited to be bringing this potentially transformative approach to cancer care into the NHS. Women with relapsed ovarian cancer and those with rarer gynaecological cancers need careful decisions to be made regarding their treatment. The opportunity to use biomarker data from their tumours to identify the best therapy options is invaluable. We are proud to be putting Yorkshire cancer patients at the cutting edge of medical innovation."

"We are pleased to be actively working alongside the NHS to transform how devastating diseases are diagnosed and treated using the power of genomics, panomics and precision medicine," said Ian Walker, Vice President, Caris Life Sciences. "Partnering with the NHS further establishes our commitment to providing access to the highest quality and most clinically actionable tumour profiling information available to physicians and patients today."

Data from clinical studies show that Caris' comprehensive tumour profiling consistently identifies biomarkers linked to specific treatments in over 90% of patients^[1], and that clinicians change their intended treatment decision based on profiling results in over 80% of cases^[2].  Across a range of cancer types, tumour profiling-guided treatment has been shown to benefit patients^[3] and improve outcomes when compared to unguided treatment^[4],[5].  

Tumour profiling is used to inform treatment selection by measuring a patient's tumour biomarkers, which are changes to proteins, genes and other important molecules within the tumour. The results help identify which treatment options are likely to be most effective, including drugs that might not have normally been considered for their type of cancer.

Around 7,100 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer in the UK each year.^[6] Symptoms, which can often be vague, include pain in the abdomen or pelvis, difficulty eating or feeling full very quickly, bloating and irregular periods.

About Caris Life Sciences® and Caris Molecular Intelligence™ 

Caris Life Sciences is a leading biosciences company focused on fulfilling the promise of precision medicine through quality and innovation. Caris Molecular Intelligence, the industry's first and largest tumour profiling service, provides oncologists with the most potentially clinically actionable treatment options available to personalise care today. Using a variety of advanced and clinically-validated technologies which assess relevant biological changes in each patient's tumour, Caris Molecular Intelligence correlates biomarker data generated from a tumour with biomarker/drug associations derived from the cancer clinical literature. The company is also developing a series of blood tests based on its proprietary Carisome® TOP™ platform, a revolutionary blood-based testing technology for diagnosis, prognosis, and theranosis of cancer and other complex diseases. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, Caris Life Sciences offers services throughout Europe, the U.S., Australia and other international markets. To learn more, please visit http://www.carislifesciences.eu.

About the pilot 

The NHS England funding for the pilot comes from the Regional Innovation Fund, which aims to support and promote the adoption of innovation and the spread of best practice across the NHS. The pilot will include cancer patients being treated at Leeds St James' Hospital, Bradford Royal Infirmary, Huddersfield Royal Infirmary and Airedale General Hospital. The data generated through the pilot will be independently evaluated by the NIHR Diagnostics Evidence Cooperative at Leeds.

1. Astsaturov IA et al., Profiling of 1,250 neuroendocrine tumors identifies multiple potential drug targets, J Clin Oncol 32, 2014 (Suppl 3; Abstr 214)

2. Epelbaum R et al, Molecular Profiling (MP)-Selected Therapy for the Treatment of Patients with Advanced Pancreaticobiliary Cancer (PBC), 2013 ASCO GI Symposium. Jan 2013. (Abstract Number 195).

3. Von Hoff D et al., Pilot Study Using Molecular Profiling of Patients' Tumors to Find Potential Targets and Select Treatments for Their Refractory Cancers, J Clin Oncol. Nov 20;28(33)2010:4877-83

4. Tsimberidou AM et al., Personalized Medicine in a Phase I Clinical Trials Program: The MD Anderson Cancer Center Initiative. Clin Cancer Res 18:6373-6383

5. Oliver K et al.,  The impact of tumor profile-directed treatment on survival  in ovarian cancer,  J Clin Oncol 32:5s, 2014 (suppl; abstr 5591)

6. Cancer Research UK, http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/type/ovarian-cancer/about/ovarian-cancer-risks-and-causes, accessed September 2014

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