GE Healthcare, Indi Molecular to develop diagnostic tool for immunotherapy patients

20 May 2019 | News

The companies will work together to develop non-invasive Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging agents (tracers) targeting CD8, focused on marking cytotoxic T lymphocytes, key predictors of immunotherapy response.

image credit- medtech.org

GE Healthcare and Indi Molecular, Inc, a California-based biotechnology company, have announced plans to develop immune cell-targeted Positron-Emission Tomography (PET) tracer candidates, based on Indi Molecular’s proprietary Protein Catalyzed Capture (PCC) technology. These tracer candidates, if successful, could help identify molecular markers of cytotoxic T-cells, and potentially help in the selection and monitoring of immunotherapy patients.

“This collaboration is a credit to the strength of both our respective Research & Development teams,” said Albert A. Luderer, Ph.D., Indi Molecular CEO and co-founder. “We believe that our protein catalysed capture technology platform is ideally suited to deliver predictable, small molecule-like biological behaviour that possesses unique, ultra-high target affinity and specificity required for targets such as immune cells.”

GE Healthcare is a leading medtech and diagnostics innovator supporting an ecosystem striving for precision health. Within precision diagnostics, the company is building a portfolio of PET tracers targeting biomarkers for immunotherapies.

“Our developed PET tracers are already being used globally to support clinical trials of therapeutics,” said Julia Casey, General Manager of Molecular Imaging at GE Healthcare. “With Indi Molecular as one of our collaborators we can now begin to develop novel PET tracers for a variety of biomarkers of interest in the immuno-oncology space. These tracers could potentially play a critical role in supporting the development of immunotherapies, treatments that have shown great promise in how we manage oncology patients today.”