HTG Molecular Diagnostics, Inc. (NASDAQ:HTGM) (HTG), a life science company advancing precision medicine through its innovative transcriptome-wide profiling technology, announced the customer publication of a peer reviewed journal article featuring the HTG Transcriptome Panel (HTP) less than one year after the breakthrough product’s commercial release.
The article, published in Frontiers in Medicine by one of several participants in the Company’s HTP Early Adopter Program, applied the comprehensive HTP to query 19,398 mRNA targets in an effort to advance the understanding of how best to treat bladder cancer patients who do not fall into categories identified by routine tissue staining. According to study authors from University Hospital Frankfurt, Germany, a two-sided classification system based on CK5/6 and GATA3 expression using immunohistochemistry (IHC) may not sufficiently reflect the heterogeneity of bladder cancer to make treatment decisions. Especially as it relates to the group of IHC-double negative cases, further analysis using the HTP for mRNA expression profiling was able to assist in identifying multiple molecular and histological subtypes, which has important implications for therapy selection in this heterogeneous group.
Bladder cancer is the second most common genitourinary malignancy with ~570,000 new cases worldwide each year, 25% of which have the more severe muscle invasive disease. Significant advances, including genomic characterization of tumors, are helping to increase the relatively low 5-year survival rates and improve treatment outcomes. We expect the HTP platform to aid in uncovering predictive biomarkers, helping identify patients who will best be served by chemotherapy and those who can be spared the associated toxicity of such treatments.
“We are proud of the scientific progress that is being enabled by researchers using our cutting edge technology, such as the team at University Hospital Frankfurt,” said John Lubniewski, CEO of HTG. “I believe the growing number of customer publications and presentations made by researchers who have experienced the unique utility of our HTP reflect the transformational impact that this product can have both in oncology and in other areas of scientific research and innovation.”
Measuring approximately 20,000 mRNA targets using HTG’s proprietary HTG EdgeSeqTM technology, HTP can be deployed to profile a wide range of diseases. In addition, we believe HTP can also be used to assist in identifying new drug candidates, develop molecular classification tools and discover critical biomarkers. The HTP requires a reduced sample amount, is less sensitive to RNA degradation resulting from sample age and provides faster turnaround times than other, currently available methods. The HTP has also been shown to have a higher sample success rate than RNA-Seq for gene expression profiling. HTG previously released a series of white papers highlighting these capabilities and performance measures, the most recent of which can be found here. In addition, the HTP was recently the subject of a global webinar presentation by researchers from AbbVie, which can be accessed for replay in the coming weeks using the following link.
