The University of British Columbia: Potential prostate cancer treatment developed in B.C. gets big boost
A
potential treatment for advanced prostate cancer developed by the University of
British Columbia (UBC) and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI)
scientists has been licensed to pharmaceutical company Roche, marking UBC’s
largest licensing agreement to date.
Developed
at the Vancouver Prostate Centre, the new drug technology that is in
pre-clinical development could one day be used to treat prostate cancers that
have become resistant to existing treatments. The Vancouver Prostate Centre is
a research hub hosted by UBC and VCHRI and designated a national Centre of
Excellence for Commercialization and Research.
“We are
thrilled that a potential treatment discovered here in B.C. will be developed
further and could help many patients dealing with this disease,” said UBC
Interim President Martha Piper. “This agreement is an excellent example of the
vital role that universities can play in creating and developing new
technologies.”
When
advanced prostate cancer spreads, it becomes metastatic and virtually
incurable. Current treatments initially slow the spread of the disease and help
prolong a patient’s life but the cancer eventually mutates and becomes
resistant to drugs. The new treatment, developed by a research team led by Paul
Rennie and Artem Cherkasov, is designed to outsmart the cancer by targeting a
site in the cancer cells that is not prone to mutation.
“We’re
at a stage now that we need the right pharmaceutical partner to help to move
this technology from a discovery into a finished product,” said Rennie, a
professor in the department of Urologic Sciences at UBC and director of
laboratory research at the Vancouver Prostate Centre.
“Licensing
a treatment to a company is a critical step in ensuring that new technologies
end up helping people who need them,” said Brad Wheeler, technology transfer
manager at the University-Industry Liaison Office and lead negotiator on the
Roche license.
The
licensing agreement also stipulates that research will continue in
collaboration with the scientists at the Vancouver Prostate Centre.
“We’ve
brought computers into biology and we can see what’s going on before we test it
in the lab,” said Cherkasov, associate professor at the department of Urologic
Sciences and a senior research scientist at the Vancouver Prostate Centre.
Under
the terms of the agreement with Roche, UBC and VCHRI can expect to receive an
upfront payment, and up to $141.7 million US in pre-clinical, clinical and
sales milestone payments for the first product to reach the market, and
royalties thereafter. The scientists will share 50 per cent of the net
revenues.
BACKGROUND
The
potential new treatment was developed using a new computer technology that can
scan a database of millions of different molecules to find the ones that will
work best as possible treatments.
The
research was funded in part by Prostate Cancer Canada, Prostate Cancer
Foundation (U.S.), Safeway Canada, the CIHR’s Proof of Principle
commercialization program, and PC-TRiADD.
S0urce -
http://news.ubc.ca/
