ATHENS, Ga., July 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Abeome Corporation, a Georgia-based biotech company, announced today a strategic equity investment by Cato BioVentures and a collaboration with Cato Research Ltd., its global contract research and development organization. The investment and collaboration will help support continued development of Abeome’s lead ovarian cancer project.
Abeome’s proprietary technology vastly improves the development of monoclonal antibodies and Abeome is deploying its technology to provide a shotgun approach to develop an array of antibodies for an ovarian cancer therapeutic target. The company has developed novel monoclonal antibodies to four ovarian cancer cell lines and has begun screening these antibodies in search of those which cause either cancer cell growth inhibition or death.
Joel Eisner, Ph.D., Associate Principal of Cato BioVentures, states, “We are fascinated with Abeome’s ability to develop such a large library of monoclonal antibodies by use of their technology. They have pushed the bottleneck of therapeutic development to the screening step which will provide a broader selection of novel antibodies to more cancer targets.”
Monoclonal antibodies have become the centerpiece of many high-profile therapeutic products. Their specificity to disease targets, like cancer, has drawn significant attention from the biotech community.
“Ovarian cancer is a dreadful disease which is frequently diagnosed at a very late stage of development. With no effective therapeutic drugs on the market to date, we expect to address this unmet medical need. Our technology improves the likelihood of finding that one-of-a-kind antibody that can make the difference,” said Mike Wanner, President and CEO of Abeome. “We are excited to have Cato Research join our expanding team of professional experts to help us with this important project”.
About Abeome
Abeome Corporation is a biotechnology company dedicated to leveraging its proprietary hybridoma technology to accelerate and improve the development of monoclonal antibodies for life sciences. Abeome owns an exclusive license for the technology from the University of Georgia Research Foundation and has garnered significant support from the Georgia Research Alliance.
For more information on Abeome, visit http://www.abeomecorp.com .
About Cato BioVentures
Cato BioVentures is the venture capital affiliate of Cato Research Ltd. and has assisted entrepreneurs and established management teams in building successful life science companies. Through strategic CRO service agreements with Cato Research, Cato BioVentures invests its in-kind CRO Service Capital(TM) in innovative therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics and platform technologies for improved drug discovery and development, offering promising life science companies immediate access to a broad range of essential CRO services on a noncash basis. Access to these time-critical CRO services enables management to achieve key value-added development and regulatory milestones with less reliance on other sources of capital. Cato BioVentures has offices in Boston’s Bay Colony, Research Triangle Park and Silicon Valley.
For more information on Cato BioVentures, visit http://www.catobioventures.com .
CONTACT: Mike Wanner of Abeome Corporation, +1-706-248-6098,
mike.wanner@abeomecorp.com; or Joel Eisner, Ph.D. of Cato BioVentures,
+1-919-361-2286, jeisner@cato.com
Web site: http://www.abeomecorp.com/
http://www.catobioventures.com/
