Allied-Bristol Life Sciences Launches ißeCa Therapeutics to Focus on Cancer Drugs
March 16, 2016
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Boston-based Allied-Bristol Life Sciences, LLC announced today that it had created a subsidiary, ißeCa Therapeutics. The company, which is likely pronounced “eye-BECK-uh,” will license compounds from NYU School of Medicine that target the Wnt signaling pathway, which is implicated in a number of cancers.
Allied-Bristol Life Sciences is a biopharmaceutical business jointly owned by Allied Minds and Bristol-Myers Squibb . ABLS provides a fully integrated drug discovery center, drug development expertise, and the financial backing and experienced management needed to drive early-stage therapeutic projects. Its areas of interest include cardiovascular diseases, fibrosis, genetically defined diseases, immunology, and cancer.
The NYU Office of Therapeutics Alliances (OTA) was founded in 2013 with the goal of accelerating and minimizing the risk of drug discovery projects developed at NYU School of Medicine. The NYU Office of Industrial Liaison (OIL) works to promote commercial development of NYU discoveries, looking for commercial partners and research collaborations.
ißeCa Therapeutics is build on the work of Ramanuj Dasgupta, research associate professor at NYU School of Medicine and the OTA. The technology involves ß-Catenin Responsive Transcription (iCRT) inhibitors. These inhibitors slow tumor growth by blocking the Wnt signaling pathway that malfunctions in cancer cells.
“We are very excited to begin working with ABLS,” said Dasgupta in a statement. “Our work is at a critical point in its translation, where the resources and expertise of the ABLS team will make the difference in bringing these novel cancer therapies to patients as quickly as possible.”
ißeCa Therapeutics will hold the license to the technology. It will work to complete research and pre-clinical development so a potential drug candidate can be pushed to investigational new drug (IND) applications and into the clinic.
This licensing agreement with NYU School of Medicine is the third in a group of discovery and development projects involving Allied-Bristol Life Sciences.
On June 22, 2015, ABLS announced it had licensed intellectual property (IP) developed by Malcolm Whitman, professor of development biology, and Tracy Keller, an instructor in the same department at Harvard University. The IP involves the mechanism of action behind halofuginone (HF), a chemical that is similar to the active ingredient in the root of the blue evergreen hydrangea (Dichroa febrifuga), which has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for hundreds of years. It is being developed as potential therapy for various fibrotic and autoimmune diseases.
On Aug. 27, 2015, ABLS licensed technology developed by David Spiegel and his laboratory at Yale University. This technology is a form of proprietary synthetic molecules called Antibody Recruiting Molecules (ARMs) that recruit antibodies in the bloodstream and help them target specific cell proteins.
Of the latest project, Satish Jindal, chief executive officer of ABLS said in a statement, “Dr. Dasgupta and OTA’s approach provides ALBS via ißeCa Therapeutics with the opportunity to identify new drug candidates for this pathway that has to date been quite challenging. We are eager to work with NYU on this program. This proprietary technology is at an ideal stage for us, allowing ABLS to utilize its significant drug discovery and development expertise to accelerate the pre-clinical research needed to bring these promising leads to clinical candidates.”