TriStar Technology Enables Gene Finding That Could Lead to Personalized Treatment for Breast Cancer

LOS ANGELES, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- April 16, 2007 -- AACR, Booth #1759 -- Rockville, MD-based TriStar Technology Group (TriStar) today announced results of a genetic study could have major implications in the treatment of breast cancer.

The research, carried out using TriStar's high throughput tissue analysis platform and conducted by its collaborator, the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Germany, discovered that a fifth of women with breast cancer carry extra copies of a particular gene (ESR1) -- a finding that could, one day, lead to personalized treatment for the potentially deadly disease.

The study (published on-line in Nature Genetics on April 8, 2007) "Estrogen receptor alpha (ESR1) gene amplification is frequent in breast cancer and predicts response to tamoxifen," co-authored by Ronald Simon, UKE's/TriStar's Head of Molecular Pathology, and Guido Sauter, TriStar's Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, found that 20 percent of breast cancer patients carry extra copies of a gene called ESR1 (estrogen receptor alpha), and that such patients are more likely to respond positively to the widely-used estrogen blocking drug tamoxifen than are patients who do not carry extra copies of the gene.

"The findings of this study could lead to genetic tests to determine when and whether tamoxifen should be prescribed as an effective breast cancer treatment," said Simon. "The findings also suggest that tamoxifen might, one day, replace or diminish the need for chemotherapy in some women."

Sauter commented, "Because the gene is amplified in women with certain pre-cancerous conditions, tamoxifen might also help prevent breast cancer from developing in women showing its early signs."

Milan Bhagat, TriStar's president, added, "We are very pleased that the UKE team was able to leverage the unique capabilities of TriStar's high throughput tissue analysis platform and our corresponding library of tissue samples to rapidly generate accurate data relating the frequency of ESR1 amplification to prognosis and response to tamoxifen. This further validates the fact that our unique, high-density prognosis arrays can rapidly and effectively be used to generate immensely valuable intellectual property early in the drug discovery process."

The TriStar high throughput tissue analysis platform enables researchers to rapidly screen genes against thousands of tissue samples, representing numerous types of cancers, to identify genetic markers, validate drug targets that cause disease and correlate clinical (prognosis) data thereby accelerating the development of new and safer drugs.

About the Study:

Using Affymetrix 10K SNP array to screen for gene copy number changes in breast cancer tissues collected from patients in Germany and Switzerland, the researchers detected amplification of the ESR1 gene. They then conducted high-density tissue microarray analysis on more than 2000 micro arrayed clinical breast cancer samples from TriStar's repository, and found amplification in more than 20 percent of breast cancers. Ninety-nine percent of tumors with ESR1 amplification showed estrogen receptor protein over-expression, compared with 66.7 percent cancers without such amplification.

In a subsequent study of 175 breast cancer patients who received tamoxifen, survival was significantly higher in those individuals with ESR1 amplified cancers than in those with ER (protein) positive cancers without amplification. An additional finding -- of ESR1 amplification in benign and pre-cancerous breast diseases -- suggests that ESR1 amplification may be a common mechanism in breast disease and an early genetic alteration in many types of breast cancer.

Study researchers will present their results (and will be available for interview) at a poster session at the meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research in Los Angeles, April 17, 8:00 AM-12:00 PM, Late Breaking Poster Session 1, Exhibition Hall, Los Angeles Convention Center, Poster LB-163. They will also be available at Booth 1759 before and after the poster session.

For a press copy of the study, please call or email one of the contacts listed below.

About TriStar Technology Group

Rockville, MD-based TriStar Technology Group, LLC, offers one of the world's largest commercially available repositories of high-density formalin fixed and frozen human tissue micro arrays (1400 - 3500 patient samples per array, over 50,000 micro arrayed specimens). Comprehensive, annotated clinical information on prognosis and treatment as well as IHC/FISH data on 25 molecular markers is available. TriStar provides large-scale in-vitro target validation using high-density multi-tumor, normal tissue and cancer-specific prognosis arrays on a fee-for-service basis to pharmaceutical & diagnostic companies. The technology for high-density tissue arrays was co-developed by Guido Sauter, Director of the Institute of Pathology at Hamburg-Eppendorf and an Equity Partner in TriStar. For more information please visit www.tristargroup.us

Contact Information: Contacts: Milan Bhagat President TriStar Technology Group 301.792.6533 Email Contact Constantine Theodoropulos Boston Communications 617.816.4637 Email Contact Anita Harris Boston Communications 617.576.0906 Email Contact