Amplia Therapeutics (ASX:ATX) has announced that it has entered into a research collaboration with Korean preclinical drug screening company Next&Bio.
A research collaboration agreement between the companies was signed at the headquarters of Next&Bio in Seoul, Korea.
Next&Bio, a wholly-owned subsidiary of healthcare conglomerate Hk Kolmar Holdings headquartered in Seoul, has developed a unique capability in drug screening. The platform capability involves testing drugs, both alone and in combination with approved or experimental treatments, in cancer cells isolated from patients. The cancer cells are grown under special conditions to closely resemble the environment in the patient’s cancer closely, thereby better predicting how effectively drugs will act against the cancer.
The research collaboration will explore the activity of Amplia’s FAK inhibitors against patient-derived pancreatic cancer cells that harbour known oncogenic mutations. These are changes to the DNA that can cause cells to become cancerous and develop into tumours.
The company said it is interested in exploring the potential synergistic activity of its FAK inhibitors with a new class of drugs currently in development that inhibits the potent oncogene Kras. These drugs can potentially be used in the treatment of pancreatic cancer in coming years.
CEO and managing director Dr Chris Burns said, “To be able to test our FAK inhibitors in these well-characterised patient-derived cell systems, gives us the chance to explore the activity of our compounds in combination with targeted therapies such as kRas inhibitors. This in turn opens up new commercial opportunities for our FAK inhibitors to be used in combination with drug classes currently in clinical development for pancreatic cancer in addition to the chemotherapy combination currently being investigated in the ACCENT trial.”