Cancer

Seeking new ways to improve both information sharing and hasten preclinical and clinical research of promising new cancer drugs, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and AstraZeneca in early January announced the creation of master agreements governing the terms of research that should help shave months off the time between when a promising drug is identified and when it is brought to clinical trials.

Although it’s no mystery to cancer drug discovery researchers that coagulation and coagulation proteins impact on angiogenesis, trying to make a therapy based on that knowledge has been the tricky part. But EntreMed Inc., a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company developing therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and inflammatory diseases, and Affymax Inc., which works in the area of discovery and development of novel peptide drugs, think they may be on the road to circumventing that problem, based on preclinical data regarding novel peptides they co-developed.

TransTech Pharma Inc. now has a worldwide research and license collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH using TransTech’s proprietary TTP Translational Technology. Under the terms of the agreement, which was finalized the end of last year, Boehringer Ingelheim has the exclusive right to develop and commercialize all compounds directed at the target covered by the collaboration.

Whenever an old boss of mine wanted to tell the staff something that he felt would rock our world, revolutionize science publishing, and bring world peace, he would always start his oration with a reference to the movie The Graduate.

Ciphergen Biosystems Inc. announced a research and collaboration agreement in liver disease with the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB). The primary goal of the work will be to develop a diagnostic blood test that can measure the progress of liver disease and thus reduce the need for painful and costly biopsies of the liver in hepatitis C patients. But the work has a longer-term goal that could have a huge impact on developing better drugs for treating such patients.

PIramed Limited, a privately owned biotechnology company, has teamed up South San Francisco, Calif.-based Genentech to develop a new class of anti-cancer drugs. The drugs target PI 3-kinase, a key intracellular signaling enzyme involved in a broad range of cancers that plays key roles in cell cycle regulation, proliferation, survival, apoptosis and motility.

Astex Therapeutics announced in early December a new strategic alliance with Novartis focused on the research, development and commercialization of novel cell cycle control drugs for the treatment of cancers and other human diseases. The agreement grants Novartis a worldwide license to Astex’s novel oral cell cycle inhibitor, AT9311, currently completing IND-enabling preclinical studies, and an option for a global license to Astex’s parenteral cell cycle inhibitor, AT7519, currently in Phase 1 clinical trials. AT7519 and AT9311 were both discovered using Astex’s proprietary fragment-based drug discovery platform, Pyramid.

Despite some early setbacks involving toxicological effects and poor efficacy, the gene therapy market in the United States is expected to reach approximately $125 million in 2006 and possibly even surpass $6.5 billion by 2011, according to recent reports by Frost & Sullivan. Several technological advances in the design, development, and production of viral vectors, however, are beginning to generate renewed interest in the sector.