On April 10, 2021 OncXerna Therapeutics, Inc., a precision medicine company using an innovative RNA-expression based biomarker platform to predict patient responses to its first-in-class targeted oncology therapies, reported new results from its Xerna TME Panel during Week 1 of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) (Free AACR Whitepaper) Annual Meeting (Press release, OncXerna Therapeutics, APR 10, 2021, View Source [SID1234577834]). In this study, OncXerna demonstrated that the first panel (TME Panel) from its Xerna platform revealed prognostic subtypes in colorectal cancer (CRC) by analyzing tumor samples from over 600 CRC patients. The XernaTM TME Panel uses proprietary RNA-based gene expression data and a machine learning-based algorithm to classify patients based on their dominant biologies of the tumor microenvironment (TME), and has been developed as a clinical assay.

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"Our goal is to expand the applicability of precision medicine in cancer through a novel approach that matches patients to the appropriate therapies by using RNA expression to identify patients with common biological drivers," said Laura Benjamin, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer at OncXerna Therapeutics. "In our AACR (Free AACR Whitepaper) presentation, we presented results that verify the capabilities of our TME Panel and enable its expanded use for patients with colorectal cancer. These exciting findings pave the way for future prospectively-driven trials with the Xerna TME Panel and our clinical-stage programs, navicixizumab and bavituximab."

The results from the study presented at this year’s AACR (Free AACR Whitepaper) Annual Meeting revealed:

An expansion of the TME Panel’s capabilities to include CRC, as the RNA-based gene signature identified unique subtypes of patients with angiogenic and immune biologies that dominated the stroma. These biologies were prognostic for recurrence-free and overall survival, supporting the potential use of the TME Panel as a novel, pan-tumor biomarker.
A comparison of the TME Panel’s subtypes to the Consensus Molecular Subtypes (CMS) model. The CMS model represents gene expression data from both colorectal cancer cells and their microenvironment. In contrast, the Xerna TME Panel integrates the interplay of angiogenic and immunogenic properties of the tumor microenviroment, and because of this focus, could be more predictive for treatments that target angiogenic and immunogenic properties of the TME.
The following two datasets were used to explore the application of the TME Panel in colorectal cancer: 1) A public dataset from the Cartes d’Identite des Tumeurs (CIT) containing 566 primary tumor samples collected from patients with stage 1-4 CRC between 1988 and 2007 in France, and 2) A proprietary collection of 92 samples from the Wood Hudson Cancer Research Laboratory (WH) of patients with metastatic CRC who were treated with various regimens including targeted therapies following surgery.

OncXerna’s electronic poster, #348 entitled: "RNA-based Diagnostic Panel Matches TME Phenotype to Therapeutic Mechanism of Action in Colorectal Cancer," is included in the "Biomarkers Predictive of Therapeutic Benefit" poster session at the AACR (Free AACR Whitepaper) annual meeting. A link to the poster can be found here.