Cancer

Personalized medicine—and personalized vaccines, in particular—have generated tremendous interest. Each vaccine must be custom-made for each patient, so for each patient more work must be done than is required for “off-the-shelf” vaccines. What are needed now are methods that enable the manufacture of such products in an affordable and efficient manner.

A non-autologous approach to vaccines

PALO ALTO, Calif.—Target Discovery announced a collaboration with the Virginia Prostate Center to develop clinical assays for prostate cancer

LOS ANGELES—Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute recently developed a tool to track and kill malignant brain tumor cells

TEL AVIV, Israel—Compugen Ltd. announced it is leading a consortium to simulate the MAP-kinase pathway, a signaling pathway related to cancer

NUTLEY, N.J.—MorphoSys AG announced a collaboration to develop new therapeutic antibodies in oncology

PHILADELPHIA—Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania developed a method that combines immunological detection with nucleic acid amplification-based detection

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Multidrug treatments are becoming increasingly prevalent but little effort has gone into determining whether the drugs will interact with each other in unexpected ways

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—At the recent AACR meeting, AVEO Pharmaceuticals announced the development of fully human breast tumors in mice

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif.—Biotech giants Amgen and Genentech announced the signing of licensing agreements that granted each company access to multiple patents related to the manufacture and use of antibodies and related technologies. This includes a license for multiple products under Genentech’s Cabilly patent family (including U.S. Patent No. 6,331,415) relating to the methods and vectors required to produce antibodies.

ST. LOUIS—Orion Genomics is aggressively working to decipher the “second code” of DNA to advance the state of cancer diagnostics and treatment, and has enlisted the help of researchers at the University of Glasgow to that end. The work currently focuses on discovering novel epigenetic biomarkers for the development of tests that screen for cancer at an early stage and that could provide personalized information about how tumors are most effectively treated.

SAN DIEGO—Immusol has entered into a license agreement with Baylor College of Medicine for the exclusive, worldwide rights to a novel oncolytic viral therapy using herpes simplex viruses (HSVs), which the company believes will be superior to adenovirus-based oncolytic viral therapies being worked on by other companies. The financial terms of the license agreement were not disclosed.