Biovica’s DiviTum technology selected for new cancer drug trial

Biovica’s DiviTum technology has been selected by the International Breast Cancer Study Group (IBCSG, Bern) and the Breast International Group (BIG, Brussels) to be part of a state of the art trial, studying the effects of palbociclib, a promising new cancer drug.

The study, named PYTHIA, will follow women with advanced breast cancer being treated with anti-hormonal therapy in combination with palbociclib, a cancer therapy belonging to a class of drugs called CDK-inhibitors – developed to stop proliferation of tumors.

Palbociclib has demonstrated significant slowing of breast cancer progression and was approved in the US earlier this year.

DiviTum will be used to analyse blood taken from patients before and during therapy. There are no biomarkers available today for this new class of drugs.

The main purposes by including DiviTum are to explore whether DiviTum can assist physicians in predicting which patient will respond to this therapy and in monitoring drug efficacy during treatment.

“We want to explore the potential of DiviTum to identify those breast cancer patients with a higher likelihood of response to palbociclib. We will also use DiviTum to monitor patients while on treatment with palbociclib with the aim of testing whether this could be proposed as a new bio-marker of treatment efficacy”, says Dr Luca Malorni, MD, PhD, Principal Investigator of the PYTHIA study, Hospital of Prato, Italy.

Biovica CEO Anders Rylander said: “It’s a great honor and opportunity for us that our technology has been selected by IBCSG and BIG for inclusion in this very important study. Together with BIG and IBCSG our objective is to provide a tool for evaluating the best treatment options for patients and monitor efficacy for this promising class of drugs.”