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In
the complicated world of cancer diagnosis, bigger is definitely
not better. Recognizing the power of small, one company—Immunicon—has
developed a technique that can isolate testing down to a single
cell in a tube of blood—utilizing nanotechnology.
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CellTracks Analyzer II, part of Immunicon's suite
of CellTracks technologies, is a semi-automated fluorescence
microscope used to count and characterize selected cells.
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Immunicon's technologies, collectively
called CellTracks, can identify, count and characterize a small
number of tumor cells present in a blood sample from a patient. "Immunicon
is one of only a few medical diagnostics companies that have
successfully gone from product concept all the way through
to United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance," says
James G. Murphy, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial
Officer of Huntington Valley-based Immunicon.
Better Technology
Means
Better Diagnoses
CellTracks isolates circulating tumor cells in the blood using
various magnetic enrichment techniques. "There are many
other cell separation techniques out there, including flow
cytometry, but a number of very important subcategories of
cells do not exist in large enough quantities for these techniques
to isolate and evaluate them," Murphy says. "That's
why CellTracks is so revolutionary. For example, while flow
cytometry isolates down to thousands of cells of a particular
population in a blood sample, CellTracks can isolate down to
a single cell in a tube of blood."
Murphy points to "very powerful
clinical data" that backs up the company's technology,
including a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine
that describes the positive results of the company's fundamental
clinical trial in monitoring metastatic breast cancer.
Starting Off Together
Immunicon was founded by Paul Liberti, a scientist on the faculty
at Thomas Jefferson University Medical College, in 1983—the
same year that Ben Franklin Technology Partners was established.
Liberti had the idea to use magnetic particles coated with
an antibody to isolate very rare populations of cells in
the blood, a new and different technique that set it apart
from others in the marketplace. In 1984 Ben Franklin established
its Seed-Stage Funding Program, with Immunicon as one of
its first projects.
The company, whose current president
and CEO is Byron D. Hewett, built up steam in the early 1990s
with some help from Ben Franklin Technology Partners (BFTP). "Ben
Franklin provided a loan that was part of a joint development
effort with Temple University, and it helped advance some of
the technology we were involved in," Murphy says. Immunicon's
CEO at the time was Edward Erickson, who went on to temporarily
lead Immunotope Inc., another BFTP portfolio company in the
southeastern PA region. In 2004, Immunicon was named Nanotechnology
IPO of the Year by Small Times magazine, and Erickson was named
Small Tech Business Leader of the Year.
Filling a Need
Murphy says that BFTP fills a need that frequently exists when
companies are in the product concept stage. "You won't
often see venture capitalists taking an active interest in
developing new technologies until they have reached a certain
point. Ben Franklin really helps scientists work their concepts
through the principles necessary to obtain a larger amount
of funding, which in turn helps with further development." In
the case of Immunicon, a modest initial investment by BFTP
helped create a multimillion-dollar cancer diagnostics enterprise.
BFTP/SEP invested a total of $455,000 in Immunicon from 1984
to 1996.
Today Immunicon is 100 employees strong
and growing, with a market cap of more than $25 million. "As
large as the potential cancer diagnostic market will grow is
as large as Immunicon can become," Murphy says. "We
plan to continue developing our technology so it will detect
even earlier stages of cancer and help match particular therapies
with particular patients in a personalized format."
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