OncoSec Medical to present biomarker strategy for electroimmunotherapy at upcoming conference

OncoSec Medical (OTCBB:ONCS), which is developing its OMS ElectroOncology therapies to treat solid tumor cancers, said Thursday that it will be presenting its biomarker strategy at an upcoming conference in San Diego this month.
The goal of the company's strategy is to identify and evaluate potential markers that could enhance the selection of patients potentially responsive to OncoSec's ElectroImmunotherapy treatment.
Chief business officer at OncoSec,  Michael Cross, Ph.D., will be presenting the company's strategy at the upcoming BioMarker Partnering & Deal-Making Conference during the BioMarker Summit 2012 in San Diego, from March 15-16, 2012.
OncoSec uses its electroporation delivery system which applies cell membrane stimulation to deliver immunotherapy or chemotherapy to treat a range of cancerous tumour types.
The OMS electroporation system has proven to enhance cellular uptake, effectively treating cancerous cells while sparing surrounding healthy tissue cutting through the toxic side effects of current available treatment options like chemotherapy and radiation.
In 2011, the company outlined a clinical development plan for its local and potentially systemic ElectroImmunotherapy program, which uses the OMS system to deliver a DNA-based immunotherapy, known as DNA IL-12.
DNA IL-12 IS designed to induce a local immune response against the treated cancerous tumour, while exploiting this response to initiate a global systemic response against untreated tumours in other areas of the body.
The company said that with the recent approvals of immunotherapies for some types of cancer, a shift in the development paradigm of cancer immunotherapies has occurred. At the heart of this is the understanding that immunotherapies result in new patterns of anti-tumour response, "which are delayed compared to other conventional treatments".
"Therefore it is evident that measurable and reproducible biomarkers must be identified for use as either prognostic or predictive tools, thus allowing investigation of its relationship with clinical outcomes," OncoSec said in a statement Thursday.
Through collaboration with Serametrix Corp, the company is attempting to decipher these biomarkers early in clinical development using new profiling assays, for its electroporation-mediated delivery of the immunotherapeutic agent IL-12.
The ElectroImmunotherapy treatment is currently being tested in a phase two trial for metastatic melanoma.