DELFI Diagnostics, Inc., a developer of accessible blood-based tests that deliver a new way to enhance cancer detection, has announced the availability of the company’s fragmentome-based research use only (RUO) cancer monitoring assay. The DELFI-Tumor Fraction (DELFI-TF) assay is a highly sensitive, inexpensive means of noninvasive measurement of tumor burden and assessing treatment response and resistance in patients with advanced cancer.

In addition to this announcement, DELFI has also revealed a new research collaboration with Immunocore Holdings plc (Nasdaq: IMCR) – a commercial-stage biotechnology company pioneering the development of a novel class of bispecific T cell receptor (TCR) immunotherapies against cancer (ImmTAC molecules) – focused on exploring the use of the DELFI-TF cancer monitoring assay as an early predictor of benefit from treatment with ImmTAC-based therapies.

Nicholas C. Dracopoli, Ph.D., co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of DELFI, stated, “The DELFI-TF assay delivers a genome-wide measure of the proportion of cfDNA derived from a tumor and it is highly correlated with the mutant allele fraction (MAF) that is often used to evaluate treatment response and resistance to immunotherapies in advanced cancer patients. Our fragmentome-based assay has numerous advantages as it requires very little plasma, has a low cost of processing, and is not confounded by clonal hematopoiesis or driver mutation switches.”

Moreover, the DELFI-TF RUO assay is also being evaluated by additional parties across the pharmaceutical industry for its potential application in advancing other healthcare discoveries, and DELFI anticipates announcing more research collaborations in the near term.

DELFI Diagnostics is developing next-generation, blood-based tests that are accurate, accessible and deliver a new way to help detect cancer. Employing advanced machine-learning methods to whole-genome sequencing data, the DELFI platform is built to address the highest-burden health challenges. The company prioritizes solutions that have the potential to save lives on a global scale, including for historically underserved populations. DELFI’s platform relies on fragmentomics – the discovery that cancer cells are more chaotic than normal cells and, when they die, leave behind tell-tale patterns and characteristics of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragments.