The successful technology, PGA (Patient-derived Gene expression-informed Anticancer drug efficacy), opens the way to integrating the test in current precision oncology testing workup to complement biomarker testing, OncoDxRx said.

The gene expression nature of PGA could overcome the limitation of biomarker tests, thus benefiting many more patients including those patients unresponsive to precision medicine. Additionally, the transcriptomic profiling can capture signals from both tumor and non-tumor microenvironment, something that tumor-specific DNA-only biomarker testing is missing, the company said.

“Circulating cell-free mRNA (cfmRNA) fingerprinting is a big one,” OncoDxRx said. “Higher probability of interception and detection means you can deploy it in some difficult contexts, you just don’t have the same signature as a tumor biopsy. Putting that on a non-responder makes sense, because you then provide more treatment options to the patient – both for on-label and off-label therapeutic strategies.”

The high predictive power, low cost and quick turnaround offered by PGA are important for clinical applications, as the growing number of non-responders of precision medicine is creating “very, very big burden” that can be “quite tricky” to deal with today’s medical guidelines and limited therapeutic options, according to OncoDxRx.

The successful test will make it possible to use the same procedure on similar platforms, the company said. While PGA is not the first for drug response prediction, it’s the first using a patient-derived gene expression signature to interrogate 700+ cancer drugs and identify the top-ranking ones for each individual patient, according to OncoDxRx.

OncoDxRx is keeping some information around the PGA testing under wraps, including details on the target gene panel, cfmRNA technology, digital computation and data analytics. That’s kind of where the magic happens.

One of the key goals of PGA is to broaden treatment options for cancer patients with refractory, metastatic or relapsed disease. The changed oncology diagnostics and therapeutics situation in the world has accelerated OncoDxRx’s thinking around non-responders, “the largest cancer population,” with a growing realization that technological supremacy will be important to the promise of precision and personalized medicine. In addition, the reduction in testing costs and easier patient access will speed up the adoption and uptake.

OncoDxRx said the market opportunity for drug response prediction will be “in the billions.”

PGA encounters no equivalent or competing technology on the market today. It is proprietary and exclusive to OncoDxRx. OncoDxRx is also leading in cfmRNA technology, price point, turnaround time and product maturity with its clinical validation under CLIA/CAP. The company has set up a team in US and Taiwan, where it sees partnership opportunities, “and we are looking forward to supporting the medical communities in many different ways,” the company said.