Lunaphore announces successful installation of the COMET™ platform at the ICR to advance development of immunotherapies for prostate cancer

LAUSANNE, Switzerland – August 18, 2022 – 5:00 PM (CEST) – Lunaphore, a Swiss life sciences company developing technology to enable spatial biology in every laboratory, today announced the installation of their COMET™ platform at the Cancer Biomarkers Group and Drug Development Unit at The Institute of Cancer Research, London. The installation will allow researchers to uncover insights into prostate cancer biology that can be translated into precision immunotherapies, potentially improving the outcomes of patients with lethal prostate cancers. The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) was awarded access and training to the COMET™ platform after winning first prize in Lunaphore’s COMET™ Immuno-Oncology Grant Program in 2020.

 

Advanced prostate cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related death in men. Despite advances in immunotherapy research, the benefits of these treatments have not been translated to the clinic to benefit the majority of patients with prostate cancer. However, existing prostate cancer therapies have been shown to modulate the prostate tumor microenvironment, and multiple immunosuppressive barriers contribute to immunotherapy resistance in this disease. Whilst single-cell RNA sequencing technology has greatly improved our ability to interrogate the tumor microenvironment, dissecting expression and interactions at the protein level in clinical specimens remains challenging. Professor Johann de Bono, Regius Professor of Cancer Research at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: “We are excited about using this exciting novel technology for key biomarker studies that we envision can impact cancer care”.

 

Utilizing Lunaphore’s spatial biology technology, researchers at ICR will use the COMET™   platform to perform hyper-plex immunofluorescent analysis on human advanced prostate cancer biopsies taken from various disease sites to characterize and determine the protein expression of key immune modulators and cell types in the prostate cancer tumor microenvironment in order to better understand immunologic interactions and their clinical impact in advanced prostate cancer.

 

“We are pleased to expand the application of our spatial biology technology to uncover new pathways that may be at the root of diseases such as prostate cancer,” said Ata Tuna Ciftlik, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Lunaphore. “COMET™ helps provide novel insights into lesser researched areas of biology, providing researchers the tools to potentially breakthrough the current standard of treatment.”

 

To learn more about the COMET™ PA platform, please visit: https://lunaphore.com/products/comet/

 

To learn more about Lunaphore, please visit: https://lunaphore.com/

 

 

About Lunaphore

Lunaphore Technologies S.A. is a Swiss company born in 2014 with the vision of enabling spatial biology in every laboratory. Lunaphore has developed a game-changing chip technology which can extract spatial proteomic and genomic data from tumors and transform any simple assay into multiplex spatial biology without complexity. Lunaphore empowers researchers to push the boundaries of research to ultimately develop the next generation personalized therapies. Lunaphore recently completed registration as C corporation in the United States as part of its continuing global expansion to serve customers and partners in the translational and clinical research markets. For further information on Lunaphore and its products, please visit www.lunaphore.com.

 

 

About COMET™

COMET™ is a fully automated, sequential immunofluorescence (seqIF™) instrument, able to perform hyperplex staining and imaging, producing high-quality data in a robust and reproducible manner. With superior tissue profiling capabilities, the system allows multiplex analysis of up to 40 different spatial markers per tissue slide without human intervention. COMET™ has a wide range of research applications, allowing for a dramatic improvement in the understanding of disease pathology in areas such as immuno-oncology, neuroscience, and infectious diseases. To learn more about the COMET™ platform, please visit: https://lunaphore.com/products/comet/

 

 

 

 

For further information contact:

 

Irene Tamayo

Lunaphore Corporate Communications

Email: [email protected]