Technology enables in vivo data on responses to the drug versus intrinsic cell death.
Presage Biosciences signed a deal with Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company to find drug combinations that can be used against solid tumors. Under this research agreement Millennium will use Presage’s technology to enable nonclinical studies. Presage says that it will receive up-front fees and research funding as well as development and regulatory milestones.
Presage’s platform allows for the comparison of multiple drugs in the same tumor within a preclinical model, the firm explains. It enables the placement of multiple “threads” of candidate treatments through the skin and directly into the tumor. Such controlled localization allows for the identification of drug response directly attributable to the drug versus intrinsic cell death.
These precise microdose bands provide the ability to analyze drug effects across the span of a living tumor while capturing the heterogeneity of cancer cells. The technology has potential for application across the drug development process, from target identification to clinical trial patient selection.
“One of Millennium’s goals is to advance the treatment of cancer by developing novel therapeutic combinations,” remarks Joseph B. Bolen, Ph.D., CSO, Millennium. “Presage’s technology platform allows us to obtain in-depth nonclinical in vivo data that is typically difficult to gather by conventional approaches. It is our hope that the Presage platform will help us to more rapidly and accurately prioritize our development of novel combinations.”
Nathan Caffo, president of Presage, points out, “The Presage platform provides previously inaccessible knowledge about interactions between drugs and living tumors, allowing for the selection and optimization of promising drug combinations much earlier in the drug development process.”
