SBIR-STTR Award

Significant advances in the development of immune checkpoint inhibitors have yielded durable responses in Non Small Cell Lung Cancer NSCLC the most common form of lung cancer Unfortunately many patients who might ultimately respond to this important therapy may not receive it because they are considered biomarker negative by today s Companion Diagnostic CDx tests To address this critical unmet need BioMarker Strategies proposes to develop a CDx test using the SnapPath Cancer Diagnostics System to predict patient responses to PD PD L targeted immune checkpoint inhibitors Unlike traditional indirect approaches that measure static biomarkers in dead tissue SnapPath enables treatment of a patient s live tumor cell biopsy with different modulators and measures their functional responses to predict an individual patient s response to therapy This unique approach enables NSCLC tumors to be measured for their ultimate PD L expression potential not just their expression at time of biopsy Ultimately the development of this SnapPath CDx test will yield highly predictive results for NSCLC patients in particular addressing biomarker negative patients who could otherwise be excluded from the benefit of these very important therapies