Elephas Biosciences Corporation (Elephas), a biotechnology company, today announced that it will collaborate on the development of an oncology imaging diagnostics platform to predict response to immunotherapy with Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center. The Elephas platform utilizes live patient biopsies with intact native tumor architecture and treats them with potential immunotherapies to predict response to treatment. The basis of the platform is to visualize immune cell activity including T cell activation and cytotoxic mediated killing.
This collaboration brings together the Elephas team and Mayo Clinic researchers and medical oncologists to advance the Elephas platform. The multi-year research agreement includes an observational study to demonstrate that a patient’s clinical response to immunotherapy is correlated to the response data obtained by the platform. The primary goal of the collaboration is to validate that the data generated from the platform can be used to predict response. In addition, researchers will collaborate on translational research utilizing Elephas’ proprietary instruments, which are essential components of the diagnostic platform.
“We are excited to be working with Mayo Clinic, an organization that shares our commitment to improving outcomes for patients fighting cancer,” stated Maneesh Arora, founder and CEO of Elephas.
Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, with the number of patients projected to triple by 2060. Despite a significant increase in the number of available immunotherapies, only 1 in 3 patients receiving immunotherapy frontline obtain a response and many who may respond are not eligible for therapy due to lack of accurate predictive biomarkers. With the mission to tackle the massive oncology dilemma, Elephas is developing an ex-vivo platform to assess how live patient biopsies respond to immunotherapies. Our unique approach maintains the native 3-dimensional cellular architecture and micro-environment of the tumor, enabling rapid real-time characterization of live tumor response to immunotherapies using the latest advances in metabolic imaging.
SOURCE: PRNewswire