LXRepair, Gustave Roussy Ink Research Partnership in Personalized Radiotherapy – Precision Oncology News

NEW YORK LXRepair and Gustave Roussy on Thursday said they have launched a joint laboratory to advance personalized cancer radiotherapy.

The new lab, dubbed Radio Care, will focus on advancing LXRepair's functional response prediction assays, which use DNA repair signals from blood or tumor samples to predict radiotherapy toxicity and patient responses. The biotech and cancer center, both in France, received funding from the country's National Research Agency's LABCOM program to launch the lab.

Within the partnership, Paris-based Gustave Roussy will contribute its radiotherapy expertise, while Grenoble, France-based LXRepair will utilize its in vitro assay platform. The predictive platform assesses functional signatures of DNA repair biomarkers in patients' blood and tumor samples using a biochip containing damaged DNA. Fluorescence analysis then reveals the interactions that occur at each damage site when the DNA repair enzymes from the patients' samples encounter the DNA on the chip. By analyzing the reactions, LXRepair claims its assay can characterize the efficiency and accuracy of patients' DNA repair mechanisms and predict their treatment response.

According to the firm, this approach is more "relevant and actionable" than genomic DNA repair assays, in part because it considers all possible molecular regulation, including epigenetics, transcription, and pathway reactivation, among other factors. It is developing the test to predict patients' responses to chemotherapy as well as radiation.

The firm is currently evaluating its functional assay prediction approach in several clinical studies, including one exploring biomarkers of radiotoxicity and another prospective trial focused on identifying biomarkers of radio-chemotoxicity and radio-chemoresistance among head and neck cancer patients.

LXRepair's tests are in the clinical validation phase for breast and prostate cancers, and one of the goals of the Radio Care lab's research will be to expand this approach to other tumor types.

"Making our assays available to oncologists for the global monitoring of a set of enzymatic biomarkers of DNA repair from a blood sample meets an important medical need," LXRepair President and CSO Sylvie Sauvaigo, said in a statement. "We have reached a turning point in the quest of radiotherapy personalization Radio Care is a unique opportunity to accelerate the shift to personalized radiotherapy and is a great honor."

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LXRepair, Gustave Roussy Ink Research Partnership in Personalized Radiotherapy - Precision Oncology News