Uppsala, Sweden, November 20, 2019. Biovica, active in cancer biomarkers, today announced clinical data that demonstrate DiviTum as a strong prognostic marker in operable breast cancer. The results will be presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, SABCS, December 10-14, 2019, the world´s largest scientific congress focusing on breast cancer.
The study is a retrospective analysis on serum samples from a randomized clinical trial comprising 644 women with operable breast cancer (premenopausal with stage II-IIIB HR+ breast cancer). Serum samples were collected pre-operatively on the day of surgery.
After five years, patients with low pre-operative DiviTum values (the lowest quartile, <25 percent) showed a disease-free survival rate of 81 percent versus 58 percent in the group with the highest DiviTum values (>75 percent).
“We are thrilled to see these new, interesting results. It demonstrates that pre-operative DiviTum values measured in serum is a strong prognostic marker in operable breast cancer with a potential to identify patients with the most aggressive tumors in order to personalize their therapy,” said lead investigator Dr. Luca Malorni, Prato Hospital, Italy.
DiviTum measures thymidine kinase activity (TKa), an established marker of cancer cell proliferation, but until now there has been limited data regarding the role of TKa as a prognostic biomarker in operable breast cancer.
“Dr Malorni’s research group has managed to show prognostic effect in a large cohort of women with operable breast cancer. This gives us high expectations on DiviTum’s potential beyond monitoring of treatment for patients with metastatic breast cancer, which is our first application for DiviTum.” said Anders Rylander, CEO of Biovica.
The title of the poster (P5-06-11) at San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium is Serum thymidine kinase-1 activity (TKa) as a prognostic marker in premenopausal women with hormone receptor positive (HR+) operable breast cancer (BC).