Flying Brands' IB joins multi-centre cancer trial

Flying Brands announced on Tuesday that its wholly-owned subsidiary Imaging Biometrics and the American College of Radiology Imaging Network had united efforts in a multi-centre Phase II trial sponsored by the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group-ACRIN Cancer Research Group.

The London-listed firm said the study would use ‘IB Rad Tech’ to post-process datasets acquired from more than 20 US sites, to determine how well dynamic susceptibility contrast magnetic resonance imaging (DSC-MRI) worked in measuring relative cerebral blood volume (rCBV) for early response to bevacizumab in patients with recurrent glioblastoma, and to ultimately correlate changes in rCBV to overall survival (OS) and progression free survival (PFS).

It said patients enrolled in the study would undergo a DSC-MRI exam, right before beginning treatment with bevacizumab.

After the baseline exam, follow-up DSC-MRI exams would be scheduled prior to the second dose administration of bevacizumab - typically between two and three weeks after the initial dose.

In total, 165 patients were estimated to participate in the study.

Flying Brands said that IB Rad Tech - a customisable software interface - acted as a ‘workflow wizard’ to guide users through a series of automated processing steps.

The specific workflow used in the study would leverage IB's FDA-cleared software modules ‘IB Neuro’ and ‘IB Delta Suite’ to determine the tumour region of interest (ROI), and compute DSC-MRI-based normalised and standardised rCBV maps.

Exclusive to IB, it explained that standardisation is a machine-learned calibration approach that translated relative MR values to a fixed and consistent scale, regardless of scanner vendor, field strength, or patient.

The ability to automatically generate quantitative rCBV values consistently, independent of scanner or timepoint, made it “ideal” for longitudinal assessment of treatment response, the Flying Brands board explained.

“This study will help determine if rCBV can serve as an early response imaging biomarker to an anti-angiogenic agent - bevacizumab - in patients with recurrent brain cancer,” said ACRIN principal investigator Jerrold Boxerman.

“If successful, rCBV will lead the way for the incorporation of more advanced imaging biomarkers into clinical trials, which should help to improve the development efforts for new cancer treatments.

“IB Rad Tech's ability to quantify how patients are responding to treatment will provide for a more robust study and greatly simplifies the post-processing of the numerous datasets that we will acquire.”