PHILADELPHIA (January 12, 2025) — Fox Chase Cancer Center and Omniscope, a leader in advanced molecular profiling technology, today, announced a new research collaboration aimed at identifying novel biomarkers for immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) response in non-small cell lung cancer. This partnership will leverage Omniscope's proprietary T cell profiling platform to analyze patient samples from clinical studies at Fox Chase Cancer Center.
The collaboration will focus on a prospective study led by Fox Chase, "Immunotherapy induced T cell dynamics in non-small cell lung cancer." The research aims to explore T cell receptor (TCR) repertoire from both blood and tissue of patients undergoing ICI treatment. The primary objectives are to correlate baseline and dynamic T cell activity scores with clinical response and to predict therapeutic response and efficacy for patient treatment stratification using T cells as living biomarkers.
"The search for reliable biomarkers to guide immunotherapy decisions has been a major focus in oncology, and this study could provide a new dimension to our understanding," said Hossein Borghaei, DO, MS, Chief of Thoracic Medical Oncology and Professor in the Department of Hematology/Oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center. "By longitudinally tracking T cell clonotypes, we hope to identify a dynamic 'immunosignature' that goes beyond traditional static markers like PD-L1 and tumor mutation burden. This partnership with Omniscope brings a unique technological capability to our research, and we look forward to the insights it will generate for the scientific community and for future patient care."
The partnership enables Omniscope to perform T cell signature profiling using its proprietary technologies on patient samples, including peripheral blood mononuclear cells and archival tumor tissue, provided by Fox Chase. This integration of clinical data and advanced molecular analysis is designed to rapidly accelerate biomarker discovery.
"This collaboration with Fox Chase Cancer Center represents a pivotal step in our mission to bring precision medicine to the forefront of cancer care," said Prof. Holger Heyn, Co-founder & CSO at Omniscope. "By applying our technology to analyze the T cell landscape in patients treated with immunotherapy, we aim to uncover immune biomarkers to predict who will respond to these life-saving treatments. We are excited to work with the world-leading team at Fox Chase Cancer Center to advance this unmet clinical need."
The research is a non-therapeutic biosample and correlative investigation. The findings from this study will be shared with the broader scientific community, advancing efforts to stratify patients by immune profile to guide therapy selection, reduce unnecessary costs, and ultimately improve response rates, survival, and quality of life.