18 March 2019 - - US-based Kiyatec, Inc.  has opened Inova Health System (Inova) and Roswell Park Comprehensive Care Center as sites for its US clinical study, 3D-PREDICT, to validate the company's test as a patient-specific predictor of response to cancer therapies in ovarian, glioblastoma and rare cancer patients, the company said.

The 3D-PREDICT clinical study analyses a patient's live cancer cells, grown in Kiyatec's laboratory within a biologically-relevant 3D microenvironment, to determine whether those cells respond to guideline-recommended cancer drugs.

Evidence from the company's earlier pilot study established a correlation between patient-specific predicted tumor response and actual patient clinical response to cancer therapy.

The 3D-PREDICT study is a fully prospective, multi-institutional effort to validate the predictive accuracy of the test and correlate response predictions to clinical outcomes among patients with newly diagnosed and relapsed ovarian cancer, glioblastoma and certain rare tumors.

The 3D-PREDICT study is anticipated to continue through 2022.

Inova has already accrued patients into the trial and G. Larry Maxwell, MD, chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology and co-director of Inova's Women's Health Integrated Research Center (WHIRC) is the lead investigator.

Inova Strategic Investments, the strategic investing division of the Inova Health System, is an investor in Kiyatec.

The division invests in companies that align with Inova's strategic priorities of delivering personalized health and healthcare services.

Kiyatec develops 3D cell-based assays for use in preclinical drug discovery and clinical therapy applications. It has a contract research project portfolio performing standard and custom cell-based assays for biopharma clients, as well as research and development contracts funded by the National Cancer Institute to develop 3D cell culture models for breast cancer, glioblastoma, and lung cancer.