PerkinElmer’s Phenoptics system aids new skin cancer study

PerkinElmer's Phenoptics quantitative pathology research system has played a key role in a new skin cancer study that has recently been published.

Conducted by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, the research was the first to assess Merkel cell carcinoma responses to an anti-PD1 drug.

The Phenoptics system was used to explore the presence of PD1-based immune suppression in a case that responded well, with findings potentially laying the groundwork for a predictive biomarker to be found for anti-PD1 therapies among people with this cancer type. 

In the study, other biomarkers that were expected to be informative, such as PD-L1 IHC positivity and cytotoxic T cell infiltration, did not correlate with response. 

Brian Kim, president of life sciences and technology at PerkinElmer, said: "A study of this nature demonstrates how cancer researchers can use our innovative technologies to gain valuable insights about cancer biology that can enable breakthroughs in clinical applications."

The Phenoptics system provides a high-throughput process for characterising and quantifying multiplexed biomarker expression in tissue, combining multispectral imaging techniques with a multiplexed immunohistochemistry approach.