Largest Study in Single-Cell Genomics Reveals Heterogeneity Link to Cancer Relapse Using Mission Bio Tapestri® Platform

Mission Bio, Inc., the pioneer in single-cell DNA analysis and precision genomics, today announced that the largest single-cell study to date will be presented at the 60th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting (ASH), in partnership with MD Anderson Cancer Center. This 70-patient research study, which utilizes Mission Bio’s marquee technology, the Tapestri Platform, is the first and largest of its kind to fully characterize the landscape of subclones in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) tumors and has major implications in the understanding and treatment of cancer. In tandem, the company announced updates to its Tapestri Platform, scaling its applications for the blood cancer market.

Precision Genomics for Precision Medicine
Tumors are made up of many individual cells that evolve and mutate as the disease progresses, so understanding exactly how each cell is different is paramount to detecting disease progression and determining the most effective, dynamic therapies. However, current methods in cancer care are limited to traditional bulk next-generation sequencing (NGS), a technique which relies on sample averages and therefore misses the underlying genetic diversity that drives the disease across all cells in a sample. As a result, clinicians lack the insight to properly execute on the promise of precision medicine.
 
Unparalleled Single-Cell Study Uncovers Clonality Correlation to Cancer Relapse
In the largest study ever done using single-cell genomics on 82 clinical samples, Dr. Koichi Takahashi of the MD Anderson Cancer Center sought to resolve clonal architecture of tumors missed with traditional sequencing methods. Leveraging the Tapestri Platform, the high-throughput single-cell targeted DNA sequencing technology, his lab genotyped a large cohort of AML samples to characterize clonal heterogeneity and its evolution through relapse.
 
Mission Bio’s proprietary Tapestri Platform provides insight into DNA at the single-cell level, allowing researchers and clinicians to analyze thousands of individual cells in parallel and identify those co-occurring mutations that drive therapy resistance. The platform targets actionable mutations, with content informed by leading researchers and has unprecedented capability to resolve clonal architecture through the detection of rare cancer cells that impact disease progression.
 
In addition to uncovering a detailed evolutionary history of driver mutations in AML and unambiguously identifying co-occurrence and mutual exclusivity of those mutations across more than 500,000 cells, Dr. Takahashi’s team found that those patients with higher clonal heterogeneity suffered worse clinical outcomes. This suggests that the degree of clonal heterogeneity could be an indicator of which patients are more likely to have disease recurrence.
 
“Mission Bio’s Tapestri Platform has allowed us, for the first time ever, to longitudinally monitor AML progression and provide insights using mutation co-occurrence to determine clonality that is otherwise not possible with bulk sequencing,” explained Koichi Takahashi, MD Assistant Professor in the Department of Leukemia at MD Anderson Cancer Center. “Tapestri overcomes the throughput limitations and workflow complexities associated with other single-cell methods and offers highly specific and reproducible results. Not only can we now better understand how clonal heterogeneity informs relapse of the disease, but we can apply these learnings to guide dynamic therapies and confront the disease head-on.”
 
Scaling a Targeted Single-Cell Solution for High Impact Applications
Mission Bio announced product updates to the Tapestri Platform to address a broader set of blood cancers, including a new chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) panel. CLL is a disease for which intratumor heterogeneity is also known to be a driver of both tumor development and treatment resistance. The Tapestri Platform is now compatible with Illumina NovaSeq and HiSeq sequencers, reducing sequencing costs from roughly $1,100 to $200 per run, enabling researchers to do more with their budgets. Mission Bio also announced Tapestri Custom Panel Designer, a web-based application enabling researchers to easily design single-cell DNA panels to target their specific regions of interest. Leveraging an easy user interface and optimized primer design algorithms, custom targeted panels can be designed quickly and easily to complement Tapestri Single-Cell DNA Catalog Panels.
 
The announcements come on the heels of a peer-reviewed publication by Mission Bio and MD Anderson Cancer Center in Genome Research, a first-of-its-kind study demonstrating the efficacy and utility of Mission Bio’s proprietary single-cell DNA analysis technology.
 
“Single-cell genomics is at a tipping point, particularly for blood cancers. Now we can precisely detect disease progression and treatment response,” said Charlie Silver, co-founder and CEO of Mission Bio. “It’s been an honor to support the breakthroughs of Dr. Takahashi and team, and we are excited to empower clinicians with meaningful insights to better understand disease, guide treatments, and ultimately, save patient lives.”
 
Dr. Takahashi will present his findings on Saturday, December 1, 2018 at ASH 2018 in San Diego, California. Mission Bio will also be part of the exhibition.

To learn more about Mission Bio and how it’s moving precision medicine forward, visit www.missionbio.com.
 

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Kathryn Ryan

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