Cofactor Genomics declared the results from a study undertaken by them and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center slated for presentation at the Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference in February.
Spearheaded by sarcomas expert Dr. Seth Pollack dealing with cancers of the bone and soft tissues signifying a median survival of 18 months. Research primarily aims to emphasize the development of novel immunotherapies for patients with advanced sarcoma through the study of the tumor immune microenvironment.
Studies suggest incorporating RNA- based immune signature technology commercially-available as the Cofactor Paragon assay. The assay provides both gene expression information, as well as quantitative immune profiles, which may be utilized to identify molecular markers for biological signals such as disease state, or response to therapy. Approaches of quantitative molecular profiling enable new ways to boost sarcoma patient’s immunity, therefore, escalating patient responses.
Dr. Pollack presented initial results of the study in an October 2017 GenomeWeb webinar, where he stated, “We’re happy about what we’ve learned in the [tumor] microenvironment, and we’ve been able to translate it into some new exciting clinical trials for our patients in the advanced and metastatic setting. But, what we really want to do is to be able to cure patients…Right now when a patient presents with one of these high-risk sarcomas…we have about a 50% chance of curing, the standard of care is neoadjuvant radiation therapy [along with surgery and sometimes chemotherapy]…Working with Cofactor, we’re exploring a set of patients where we have pre- and post-treatment samples, FFPE tissue from patients before their neoadjuvant radiation and sometimes chemotherapy, and then tumor resection after….we looked at all-comers (all subtypes) in this study.”