INOVIQ (ASX:IIQ) is developing and commercialising next-generation exosome capture tools and precision diagnostics in what CEO Dr Leearne Hinch says is a $15bn medical diagnostics market opportunity for some of the most common – and deadly – cancers.

“There’s a clear unmet need for earlier and more accurate cancer diagnostics and INOVIQ is developing a multi-product diagnostics pipeline for different cancers and test purposes to improve patient outcomes and survival,” she said.

“Our diagnostics pipeline currently includes SubB2M-based tests in development for monitoring breast and ovarian cancers and an exosome-based ovarian cancer screening test.”

“We also have in-market and pipeline EXO-NET® exosome capture tools for the fast, precise and efficient capture of exosomes from blood and other biofluids. Exosomes are a rapidly growing research area for biomarker discovery and the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and other diseases.”

“There are different purposes for INOVIQ’s diagnostic products from screening to detect disease earlier in asymptomatic people, through to diagnosis of disease and then monitoring patients after diagnosis to see whether they are responding to treatment or if their cancer has come back after remission.”

INOVIQ has multiple patents and patent applications covering its exosome capture and biomarker technologies and products, and was recently granted new patents in the US and Australia for its SubB2M technology.

 

Detecting early-stage cancers

Cancers are often diagnosed at late-stage after symptoms have appeared, resulting in poor prognosis. Also, the early detection of cancer is often limited by high false-positives and/or poor sensitivity to early-stage cancer.

When you put that in context of the public health crisis of around 19 million new cases, 10 million deaths and 40 million 5-year cancer survivors worldwide per year in 2020, that’s a lot of people where early detection and monitoring could improve treatment options, patient outcomes and survival.

“Our current focus is cancer, but there’s other diseases where our EXO-NET technology applies, including neurodegenerative diseases, inflammatory diseases and cardio-metabolic conditions,” Dr Hinch said.

“Our SubB2M technology can be applied to detect and monitor other cancers in addition to breast and ovarian cancers, such as colorectal, prostate, pancreatic and melanoma.  Using a next-generation benchtop SPR instrument, we are also evaluating  SubB2M  as  a pan-cancer indicator in a general health panel.”

 

Exosome capture tools and precision diagnostics pipeline in the works

INOVIQ has a research tool in-market called EXO-NET®.  EXO-NET is a pan-exosome capture that enables fast, precise and efficient isolation of exosomes for research applications. EXO-NET is an immunoaffinity magnetic bead capture technology that uses a proprietary multi-antibody matrix coated on nanobeads to capture exosomes from multiple cells and tissues based on their surface markers.  By changing the antibodies in the matrix, EXO-NET can be customised to capture exosomes released from specific cells and tissues for target disease indications.

Advancements in exosome research have been limited by slow, imprecise and expensive traditional methods to isolate exosomes. EXO-NET will accelerate exosome research and meets the need for fast, precise and scalable isolation of exosomes for research or commercial applications.

“Exosomes are small extracellular vesicles (EVs) released by most cells in the body that communicate messages to other cells. We can intercept and decode these messages using EXO-NET to tell us about the health or disease status of the parent cell. These messages include DNA, RNA, protein and lipid biomarkers found in blood (or other biofluids) that have important applications in research, diagnosis and treatment for cancer, as well as cardiometabolic diseases like heart attack and diabetes, inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease, and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease,” Dr Hinch said.

“INOVIQ plans to expand our EXO-NET research tool portfolio for capture and release of exosome subpopulations for target disease indications such as neurodegeneration. Our key focus is to use EXO-NET to develop our own exosome-based diagnostic pipeline.  Recently, we announced our first collaboration with the University of Queensland to develop a world-first exosome-based screening test for ovarian cancer.

“The University of Queensland has been awarded $2.7 million funding from the Medical Research Future Fund because accurate and reliable screening for ovarian cancer is such an important unmet need in women’s health.

”We expect to advance new EXO-NET collaborations with key opinion leaders for exosome-based diagnostics for other cancers and diseases over the next 12-months.”

 

On the commercialisation home stretch

INOVIQ already has two commercialised products in-market with its EXO-NET research tool for pan-exosome capture and its hTERT test for bladder cancer detection and there’s significant room to grow given its multi-product pipeline.

“We have a strong cash balance of $15.4 million at June 30 to advance our product pipeline towards key development and commercialisation milestones,” Dr Hinch said.

“On the SubB2M side, we have compelling preliminary results for detection of breast and ovarian cancers of over 95% sensitivity and 100% specificity across all stages on an SPR platform, and we recently transferred our proof-of-concept immunoassays to a US-based contract research company ,ResearchDx , who’ve successfully replicated the assay and are now advancing these tests through optimisation and validation, before entering clinical testing for monitoring breast and ovarian cancers.

“We also signed a manufacturing agreement with a company called MP Biomedicals in Singapore to manufacture our proprietary SubB2M protein under GMP conditions for use in our commercial SubB2M tests.

“On the EXO-NET side, recently we established sales and logistics capabilities in the US by engaging a contract sales team to accelerate the rollout of US sales.

“Looking ahead, INOVIQ has proprietary technology, a multi-product pipeline and key upcoming milestones over the next 6 to 12 months as we advance our development and commercialisation plans for our next-generation exosome capture and precision diagnostics portfolio.”

 

This article was developed in collaboration with INOVIQ Limited, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

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