NEW YORK – The Dutch-Swiss consortium of PamGene International, Alithea Genomics, and Lausanne University Hospital said Tuesday it has been awarded €1 million ($1.1 million) in Eurostars grant funding to develop a pan-cancer blood test to guide immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy.
The organizations, working together under the consortium name Mainline, said Netherlands-based PamGene intends to develop a pan-cancer predictive kinome profile for ICI therapy, Alithea Genomics will develop a transcriptomics biomarker panel using its proprietary Bulk RNA Barcoding sequencing platform, and Lausanne University Hospital will provide blood samples from ICI-eligible cancer patients for use in training and validating the prediction model. The organizations plan to validate a multiomics model that combines kinome and transcriptomic profiles with clinical data and helps predict ICI efficacy and toxicity.
In developing the kinome profile, PamGene intends to build on the technology used to create its CE-IVD-marked IOpener liquid biopsy assays to guide ICI treatment of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer and melanoma.
"Our common objective is to deliver the Mainline IOpener-Dx 2.0, an IVD blood-test for predicting ICI efficacy and toxicity, based on a unique panel of biomarkers that are applicable for a broad range of cancers," Krisztian Homicsko, head of the Molecular Tumor Board in the Lausanne University Hospital oncology department, said in a statement. "The Mainline IVD will guide clinicians in patient selection to support the effective use of ICIs, thereby encouraging use of ICIs in earlier stages of cancer."