Golden, Colorado & Nashville, Tennessee, Dec. 18, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Theralink Technologies (OTC: THER), a precision oncology company with an exclusively licensed commercial RPPA (reverse phase protein array) technology platform, is excited to announce groundbreaking work by George Mason University and the University of California, San Francisco, recently published in Cell Reports Medicine (https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S2666379123005062). This incredible effort coming from the ISPY-2 trial assessed the tumors from over 700 breast cancer patients via RPPA and uncovered new therapeutic options for some of the most challenging breast cancers that are missed entirely by current diagnostic approaches.
One of the many significant findings of the study is a clinically powerful RPPA-identified protein biomarkers, referred to as HARPS (HER2 Activation Response Predictive Signature). The investigators found that HARPS can be used to stratify patients with Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC), the most difficult to treat breast cancer, in order to administer more appropriate treatments and will likely lead to significantly improved responses to therapy. "We were very excited to discover that the RPPA-based HARPS signature could be used for more effective stratification of TNBC into existing therapies that would potentially result in ~80% response rates. This is compared to the current 30-40% response rates and this signature is entirely based on the RPPA proteomic signatures." explained Emanuel F Petricoin, Co-Director of Mason's Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine and senior author of the study.
This study highlights the critical need for the availability of the RPPA technology in the clinic, as the currently available methods have various limitations that rely on making predictions about proteins. In contrast, RPPA is a powerful and highly sensitive technology that directly measures a protein. This study highlights the critical need to understand proteins in cancer management, as nearly all FDA-approved targeted therapeutics for breast cancer are designed to target proteins. Patients were treated with targeted therapeutics based on these RPPA HARP signature findings, and the response rate to treatment was an astonishing 80% - an unheard-of number for TNBC patients. Breakthroughs like this will save lives and dramatically reduce the cost of unnecessary and ineffective treatments. From Faith Zaslavsky, President and CEO of Theralink Technologies, "We are extremely proud of the work being done by Dr. Petricoin and his team at George Mason University and are proud to be able to commercialize these efforts. Breakthroughs like this will save lives and dramatically reduce the cost of unnecessary and ineffective treatments."
In addition to the RPPA discovery of the HARP signature, the investigators analyzed other RPPA-based protein biomarkers that indicate cancer resistance to therapy and revealed many previously unrecognized but druggable protein targets. As the current treatments for patients with TNBC and other breast cancer subtypes are often unsuccessful due to the lack of identifiable targets, the sooner physicians have access to RPPA to measure critical protein biomarkers, the sooner these patients can benefit from effective treatments.
The same RPPA technology reported in this study is commercially available through Theralink's Assay for Breast Cancer, with 40% of assays ordered through the lab currently are for these challenging to manage patients with TNBC. With TNBC comprising up to 20% of all breast cancers, the utilization of this assay indicates a current and growing need to use RPPA technology to determine treatment for this population of patients. "This is why it is so exciting for me to see the RPPA technology that we invented and refined in my research laboratory be commercialized and used at the bedside by Theralink for patient benefit. Through ongoing clinical implementation and evaluation of the RPPA platform and underlying protein drug target biomarkers we can continue to rigorously and extensively validate these findings" said Petricoin, a Distinguished University Professor in the Mason Science School of Systems Biology.
About Theralink Technologies, Inc.
Theralink Technologies is a proteomics-based, precision medicine company with a CLIA-certified and CAP-accredited laboratory located in Golden, Colorado. Through its unique and patented phosphoprotein and protein biomarker platform and LDTs, Theralink's technology targets multiple areas of oncology and drug development. In addition to the Company's first assay for advanced breast cancer, Theralink is actively working on a second assay that is planned to be pan-tumor for solid tumors across multiple tumor types such as ovarian, endometrial, pancreatic, liver, head and neck, colorectal, lung, prostate, among others. Theralink provides precision oncology data through its powerful Theralink® Reverse Phase Protein Array assays to assist the biopharmaceutical industry and clinical oncologists in identifying likely responders and non-responders to both FDA-approved and investigational drug treatments. Theralink intends to help improve cancer outcomes for patients, help reveal therapeutic options for oncologists, and support biopharmaceutical drug development by using a beyond-genomics approach to molecular profiling that directly measures drug target levels and activity. For more information, please visit www.theralink.com.
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1 Hunt AL, et al. Integration of Multi-omic Data in a Molecular Tumor Board Reveals EGFR-Associated ALK-Inhibitor Resistance in a Patient With Inflammatory Myofibroblastic Cancer. Oncologist. 2023 Aug 3;28(8):730-736.
Contact Information
Theralink Technologies, Inc.
Trevor McCartney
VP, Strategic Partnerships
Cell: (720) 800-2160
trevor.mccartney@theralink.com
