Vitatex

Vitatex is focused on advance personalized medicine with tests of invasive circulating tumor cells (iCTCs) that provide better information about the metastatic potential of a patient’s cancer to improve treatment and reduce health care costs. The company’s unique advantage stems from its patented approach that captures iCTCs directly linked to the metastatic process.

Leveraging its functional Cell Adhesion Matrix (CAM) technology, Vitatex is developing proprietary diagnostic tests that can be run on blood samples, collected by standard current methods, to improve cancer treatment decisions and select effective therapies for recurrence and metastatic diseases.

Improved Cancer Drug Selection: iCTCs captured by the Vitatex method are alive and can readily be cultured in the presence of panels of cancer drugs to optimize selection of treatment tailored to each patient. The ability to determine which cancer drug or drug cocktail is most likely to benefit a patient meets a major need which currently available methods have had only limited ability to address.

Better Prognostic Information: CAM-captured iCTCs can be sorted and counted by automated flow cytometry to provide an early indication of metastasis in pre-operative patients, as well as early detection of recurrence in patients under therapeutic treatment. This greatly improved prognostic information can help the physician decide on aggressive chemo- therapy or other strategies more rapidly and confidently.

Convenient and Effective Treatment Monitoring: Serial measurement of iCTCs in routinely collected patient blood samples during the course of treatment and beyond can monitor for effective response, relapse to allow a timely change of a failing therapy, or to reinitiate therapy following recurrence.

The company’s technology also creates significant opportunities for research products and services that advance development of new cancer drugs and novel cancer markers, as well as support metastasis research. Companies developing new cancer drugs can access new models of metastasis and assay services that improve patient selection and monitoring in clinical trials. Vitatex has also developed proprietary metastatic cell lines and protein markers of invasiveness, including Seprase and DPP4, which strengthen the company’s testing methods and have potential cancer drug development applications.

Vitatex has translated its patented CAM iCTC technology platform into a pipeline of promising innovative diagnostic tests that have entered clinical studies, and into enabling new research products and services. The company is pursuing these opportunities both through its own initiatives and through partnerships being developed with major diagnostic and research tool and service companies