Title: Maintrac - A new clinical method for quantitative CTC diagnostic, treatment selection, monitoring and surveillance of patients

Biography:

Martin Burow has completed his Chemistry and Biochemistry PhD at the University of Münster in 1993 and worked 3 years as a Post-doctoral fellow for the Ministry of International Trade and Industry at the National Institute of Materials and Chemical Research (NIMC) in Tsukuba, Japan. After his return to Germany, he started his career in the medical device industry and developed the Asian-Pacific markets for Brahms-Thermofisher in the field of Medical Diagnostics (thyroid, sepsis, prenatal and oncology). Later, he started his own company (DMB-Diagnostics GmbH) to introduce highly innovative diagnostics worldwide for better treatment standards of oncological patients.

Abstract

Maintrac® is a laboratory based method to quantify in a reproducible manner living circulating tumor cells. This way it is possible to do further analytic with these cells. Be it molecular genetic testing of certain tumor characteristics or surface protein determination for real pharmaceutical target identification. Since these CTCs are alive it is possible to check all different chemotherapeutics and their killing rate on these CTCs. Best working medications can be selected before starting aggressive chemotherapies. Furthermore it is possible to monitor treatment success “just” by quantifying CTC over the cause of the therapy. Even during and after endocrine therapy it is possible to show how long to give i.e. Tamoxifen or when to switch to other, more efficient medication in case the cell number is increasing. This method was developed over the last decade and works on all tumors deriving from epithelial origin (almost all solid tumors). We showed in several clinical trials with > 650 patients and > 100,000 measurement significant improvement for patients and the overall relapse free survival while being monitored and treated based on this method. Maintrac is nowadays already used in clinical routine in ~30 countries worldwide.