The blood-based test would be designed to look for certain markers for the cancers potentially allowing for early detection of these cancers as well as assisting the selection of patients most likely to respond to the company’s monoclonal antibody therapy, ICT-109.
ICT-109, the company’s lead antibody, is a monoclonal antibody targeting small cell lung cancer and pancreatic cancer. This candidate is currently in pre-clinical development, and the company plans to couple it with a diagnostic kit to prescreen patients for the specific antigens that bind to ICT-109.
Emmanuel Petricoin, co-director of center for applied proteomics and molecular medicine at George Mason University, said: “We look forward to working with ImmunoCellular Therapeutics and working toward the validation and verification of their candidate biomarkers, as we are intrigued by the preclinical data collected to date.”