Angle PLC Announces Appointment of Chief Medical Officer

Todd Druley, M.D., PhD. brings deep experience of building a medical team and establishing oncology assays, most recently at ArcherDX, Inc.

Dr Druley is a physician-scientist, board-certified haematologist and oncologist and a leading authority in molecular and genomic diagnostics

GUILDFORD, UK / ACCESSWIRE / November 15, 2021 / ANGLE plc (AIM:AGL)(OTCQX:ANPCY) a world-leading liquid biopsy company, announces the appointment of Todd Druley, M.D., PhD. in the newly created role of Chief Medical Officer, based in the United States. Dr Druley brings highly relevant clinical and business expertise to the planning, development and commercialisation of ANGLE’s diagnostics offerings through its clinical laboratories, regulatory filings and pharma services.

Most recently, Dr Druley held the position of Chief Medical Officer at ArcherDX, Inc., a genomic analysis company focused on precision oncology, where he established and grew its medical team before the Company was acquired by Invitae Corp. for up to US$1.4 billion in October 2020. During his tenure, he built an international team that successfully established new translational applications for ArcherDX assays and, in particular, its “Personalized Cancer Monitoring” assay, which is a patient-specific, bespoke assay for detecting 50 cancer-specific mutations from cell-free DNA in blood.

Dr Druley brings a wealth of experience including 15 years at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA where he has published more than 60 peer-reviewed and invited manuscripts, many focusing on the methodology and application for identifying extremely rare mutations in complex human samples. His clinical focus was in leukaemia and he patented and licensed technology for error-corrected next-generation sequencing applicable for quantitative clonal haematopoiesis and molecular residual disease detection.

As Chief Medical Officer, Dr Druley will provide additional scientific, clinical and medical direction for ANGLE’s product development and will work with customers, collaborators and thought leaders in the liquid biopsy space to increase awareness and applications of the Parsortix^® system. Dr Druley will also bring clinical and business perspectives to the planning, development, and commercialisation of ANGLE’s diagnostic offerings through its clinical laboratories, regulatory cleared products and pharma services.

ANGLE Founder and Chief Executive, Andrew Newland, commented:

“We are delighted to welcome Todd to ANGLE and to the leadership team. We are looking forward to drawing on his deep expertise in both research and commercial settings as we develop our products and pharma services and work towards the launch of our first laboratory developed test and the future expansion of the clinical market for the Parsortix system.”

Dr Todd Druley, Chief Medical Officer, ANGLE, added:

“I am extremely excited to join ANGLE as I believe the Company’s patented technology has the potential to improve outcomes for cancer patients worldwide. I look forward to progressing ANGLE’s strategy to demonstrate the high medical value of this leading liquid biopsy solution. I am confident that my clinical and industry experience will help to guide the clinical application and future regulatory approvals for the Parsortix system.”

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Notes for editors

About ANGLE plc www.angleplc.com

ANGLE is a world leading liquid biopsy company with sample-to-answer solutions. ANGLE’s proven patent protected platforms include a circulating tumor cell (CTC) harvesting technology and a downstream analysis system for cost effective, highly multiplexed analysis of nucleic acids and proteins.

ANGLE’s cell separation technology is called the Parsortix^® system, and it enables a liquid biopsy (a simple blood test) to be used to provide the cells of interest to the user in a format suitable for multiple types of downstream analyses. The system is based on a microfluidic device that captures cells based on a combination of their size and compressibility. The system is epitope independent and can capture all types of CTCs as well as CTC clusters in a viable form (alive). CTCs enable the complete picture of a cancer to be seen; as being an intact cell they allow DNA, RNA and protein analysis and may provide comparable analysis to a tissue biopsy. Because CTC analysis is a non-invasive process, unlike tissue biopsy, it can be repeated as often as needed. This is important because cancer develops and changes over time and there is a clear medical need for up-to-date information on the status of a patient’s tumor. In addition, the live CTCs harvested by the Parsortix system can be cultured, which offers the potential for testing tumor response to drugs outside the patient.

The Parsortix technology is the subject of 26 granted patents in Europe, the United States, China, Australia, Canada, India, Japan and Mexico with three extensive families of patents are being progressed worldwide.

The Parsortix system has a CE Mark in Europe for the indicated use and, in the United States, a De Novo Submission has been made to FDA for the Parsortix^® PC1 system seeking FDA clearance with Class II Classification for use with metastatic breast cancer patients. FDA clearance is seen as the global standard. ANGLE is seeking to be the first ever FDA cleared system for harvesting CTCs for subsequent analysis.

ANGLE has also completed two separate 200 subject clinical studies under a program designed to develop an ovarian cancer pelvic mass triage test, with the results showing best in class accuracy (AUC-ROC) of 95.1%. The pelvic mass triage assay has undergone further refinement and optimisation and a 200 patient clinical verification study has now completed enrolment.

ANGLE’s technology for the multiplex evaluation of proteins and nucleic acids of all types is called the HyCEAD^TM platform and is based on a patented flow through array technology. It provides for low cost, highly multiplexed, rapid and sensitive capture of targets from a wide variety of sample types. A proprietary chemistry approach (the HyCEAD method) allows for the capture and amplification of over 100 biomarkers simultaneously in a single reaction. The HyCEAD system is extremely sensitive and is ideal for measuring gene expression and other markers directly from Parsortix harvests and was used in the ovarian cancer pelvic mass triage test to achieve best in class accuracy (AUC-ROC) of 95.1%.

ANGLE’s proprietary technologies can be combined to provide automated, sample-to-answer results in both centralised laboratory and point-of-use cartridge formats.

ANGLE has established formal collaborations with world-class cancer centres and major corporates such as Abbott, Philips and QIAGEN, and works closely with leading CTC translational research customers. These Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) are working to identify applications with medical utility (clear benefit to patients), and to secure clinical data that demonstrates that utility in patient studies. The body of evidence as to the benefits of the Parsortix system is growing rapidly from our own clinical studies in metastatic breast cancer and ovarian cancer and also from KOLs with 49 peer-reviewed publications and numerous publicly available posters, available on our website.

ANGLE has established clinical services laboratories in the UK and USA to accelerate commercialisation of the Parsortix system and act as demonstrators to support product development. The laboratories offer services to pharmaceutical and biotech customers for use of Parsortix in cancer drug trials and, once the laboratories are accredited and tests validated, will provide Laboratory Developed Tests (LDTs) for patient management.

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SOURCE: ANGLE plc

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