Aethlon Medical, Inc. and its diagnostic subsidiary, Exosome Sciences, Inc. (ESI), have announced that ESI researchers developed and validated a lectin-based diagnostic platform that can isolate exosome-based biomarkers common to several types of cancer, including melanoma.
Researchers analyzed blood samples from patients suffering from metastatic melanoma, glioblastoma, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, colorectal cancer and pancreatic cancer, and observed that the novel diagnostic platform could consistently identify the presence of cancer biomarkers.
The ESI platform is extremely sensitive and is considered an improvement over the previous ELLSA assay, originally developed to quantify changes in circulating exosome load as a result from the administration of Aethlon Hemopurifier® therapy.
This particular therapy targets the elimination of circulating viruses and tumor-secreted exosomes, which are not only cancer biomarkers, but also suppress anti-tumoral immune responses, contributing towards the tumor metastatic potential.
In addition to its strong diagnostic potential, researchers believe the sensitivity of the platform could be used to monitor cancer progression and response to therapies.
“I am immensely proud of the ESI research team as their considerable breadth of collected data reinforces the possibility that a single platform could detect and monitor a wide-range of disease conditions,” Aethlon Medical CEO Jim Joyce, who also serves as Executive Chairman at ESI, said in an Aethlon press release.
Mr. Joyce was the founder of ESI on behalf of Aethlon Medical shareholders, with the objective of exploring if the lectin-affinity techniques underlying Hemopurifier® therapy could provide a basis for proprietary diagnostic applications.
So far, 20 late-stage single point serum specimens obtained from commercial and collaborative academic biorepositories have already been analyzed from patients with metastatic melanoma, with results showing that the ESI platform was able to differentiate between cancer patients and controls.
Based on the promising data, ESI plans to develop clinical collaborations to validate and develop its platform, while identifying specific oncology indications, since this platform has the potential to improve current standard of care methods to diagnose and monitor disease progression.
More in-depth results from this study will be presented later this month at the Exosomes & Single Cell Analysis Summit in San Diego.
