On August 1, 2019 KIYATEC, Inc. reported that results from its prospective, multi-center pilot study, to investigate their assay’s predictive accuracy and correlation to outcome among newly diagnosed ovarian cancer patients, have been published in Scientific Reports. Study findings represent both a preliminary clinical validation for the company’s ovarian cancer assay and a significant developmental milestone for the assay’s technology platform, known as Ex Vivo 3D Cell Culture (EV3D) (Press release, KIYATEC, AUG 1, 2019, View Source [SID1234538040]).
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"For ovarian cancer patients and their physicians, this study represents an important step in demonstrating our ability to deliver a robust predictive assay with the potential to positively support therapeutic decision-making and improve patient outcomes," said Matthew Gevaert, CEO of KIYATEC. "Our mission is to optimize and leverage our EV3D cell culture technology to develop response-predictive clinical assays across a range of solid tumor types and make a difference in the future of cancer care."
In the study, primary tissue from 92 newly diagnosed ovarian cancer patients were prospectively collected and tested for response to National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN)-recommended frontline chemotherapy drugs at KIYATEC’s central laboratory. Assay results were successfully generated for 83 (90%) patient samples. All 92 patients received standard of care chemotherapy (80% adjuvant, 20% neoadjuvant) independent of the KIYATEC drug response prediction test result.
A total of 44 patients (of the 83 patients tested) met minimum follow-up time of 6 months post-chemotherapy for inclusion in this publication. The KIYATEC assay successfully predicted responders (i.e. platinum sensitive) and non-responders (i.e. platinum resistant) with an accuracy of 89% (39/44, p<0.0001).
Investigators also assessed assay accuracy and correlation to outcome among the 35 of 44 (80%) patients who received adjuvant chemotherapy. In this cohort, the KIYATEC assay correctly predicted responders and non-responders with 89% accuracy (31/35, p=0.0004). From date of surgical debulk, progression free survival (PFS) among test subjects predicted to respond to the first line chemotherapy they received was over 20 months v. 9 months for patients predicted not to respond (p=0.01).
"At present, clinicians have no way of knowing, prior to treatment, which of our newly diagnosed or relapsed ovarian cancer patients will respond or not to approved drug therapies," said Larry Maxwell, MD, Chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology and co-director of Inova’s Women’s Health Integrated Research Center (WHIRC), and an author of the study. "To predict a complex future result with very high accuracy is a meaningful achievement, especially given that sometimes these outcomes take months to define. Similar test performance in larger, follow-on studies would establish this as a go-to tool in cancer drug selection that should help improve patient outcomes in ovarian cancer."
Based on these promising findings, KIYATEC has opened a prospective, pivotal clinical study, 3D-PREDICT (NCT03561207), in 500 patients to further validate EV3D-enabled clinical assays for newly diagnosed and recurrent ovarian cancer (8-drug panel) and glioblastoma (12-drug panel). The study is currently open to enrollment.