AZ signs targeted colon cancer drug collaboration
pharmafile | May 11, 2011 | News story | Research and Development | AstraZeneca, colorectal cancer, personalised medicine
AstraZeneca has entered a partnership which intends to speed up the development of targeted treatments for colorectal cancer, a disease which kills 500,000 people each year in Europe and the US.
The pharma company is to join with molecular cancer diagnostics firm Agendia and The Netherlands Cancer Institute to identify molecular subtypes in this therapy area.
Specifically, Agendia will provide AstraZeneca with data and bioinformatics support which should help define subpopulations.
“Researchers have known for some time that there are different subtypes of colorectal cancer,” explained George Orphanides, head of AstraZeneca’s colorectal cancer disease area.
“The aim of this collaboration is to develop new therapies tailored to specific groups of colorectal cancer patients,” he added. “We are pleased to have partnered with two organisations that bring complementary and world-leading capabilities to our colorectal cancer programmes.”
The hope is that the three organisations will be able to discover and develop novel medicines suited to individual disease types. Current treatments include Merck KGaA’s Erbitux and Roche’s Avastin.
Agendia co-founder Bernhard Sixt said the deal “marks a continued shift in how we think about companion diagnostics and how they will be developed in the years to come”.
“A key feature of this collaboration is that personalised medicine diagnostics may be developed far earlier in the development of new drugs than has previously been possible,” Sixt went on.
The agreement could benefit the scientific community as a whole by providing a much greater understanding of the various disease types in the colorectal field, he concluded.
AstraZeneca is not a newcomer to such research: almost five years ago it began work with Cancer Research UK’s Cancer Research Technology arm to research and develop new treatments for colorectal cancer.
The aim then was to look at the link between molecular pathology of disease and efficacy of new targeted drugs in a bid to help identify novel drug targets and the development of medicines to treat chemo-resistant tumours.
Agendia’s own oncology work has included the “Symphony” breast cancer genomic profile, which takes in MammaPrint, the only FDA-cleared breast cancer recurrence assay.
Adam Hill
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