EMERYVILLE, Calif. and PALO ALTO, Calif., March 1 /PRNewswire/ -- KineMed, Inc., a pathway-based drug discovery and development company, and Roche announced today that they have entered a collaboration to jointly validate KineMed’s novel translational KineMarker(TM) technology. KineMed’s technology measures the on-mechanism activity of compounds in whole body systems in animals and man, accelerating the translation of promising therapeutic agents into advanced clinical studies. In collaboration with Roche, KineMed will clinically validate its proprietary KineMarker of collagen synthesis, a dynamic therapeutic target underlying tissue fibrosis, in an undisclosed disease area.
David Fineman, President and CEO of KineMed, commented, “Fibrosis is a critical process underlying important diseases affecting major organ systems, including the lungs, kidneys and liver. The research collaboration with Roche will help to establish our approach as a possible surrogate for an important indication and as a means for monitoring on-mechanism activity of drug candidates in ensuing clinical studies.”
Mr. Fineman continued, “We are proud to enter this agreement with Roche, which represents a very specific application with broad implications for managing diseases. In addition to this work, our technology is being used in clinical studies and clinical-track research in diabetes, dyslipidemia and oncology. We are proud to see our translational technology gain increasing traction with drug developers in these important disease indications.”
“As part of our commitment to develop innovative therapies for inflammatory and autoimmune disorders, we are intensifying our focus on developing novel biomarker modalities to better monitor disease processes and the effect of our therapies on pathways driving these outcomes,” commented Anthony Manning, PhD, Vice-President and Global Head of Inflammation, Autoimmunity and Transplantation Research at Roche Palo Alto LLC in California. “Inappropriate collagen synthesis drives tissue fibrosis and organ dysfunction, and is an important pathway in chronic organ transplant rejection, in liver fibrosis and in fibrotic lung diseases. Our collaboration with KineMed will allow us to move rapidly from the research laboratory into the clinic to validate the utility of this new technology.”
About KineMed, Inc.
KineMed, Inc. (“KineMed” or the “Company”) is a drug discovery and development company employing its proprietary translational medicine technology (AquaTag(TM)) and KineMarker(TM) to both identify active drug candidates preclinically and confirm their therapeutic activity and dose response in first-in-man studies. The Company is working to develop drugs both on its own and with pharmaceutical collaborators in therapeutic focus areas where it can demonstrate functional modulation of specific biological pathways that mediate disease.
KineMed’s technology expedites the drug development process and provides real-time insight into conditions including metabolic disorders, cancer, and diseases of inflammation and neurodegeneration.
For further information about KineMed, please visit: http://www.kinemed.com/
About Roche
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is one of the world’s leading research-focused healthcare groups with core businesses in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. For more than 100 years, the Roche Group has been committed to developing innovative products and services that address prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases, thus enhancing people’s health and quality of life. Roche has 1,000 people on its Palo Alto campus, located adjacent to Stanford University in California’s Silicon Valley. It is one of five global research centers and is focused on the discovery of new medicines to treat viral, inflammatory and immune disorders and to support organ transplantation. For more information on Roche, please access http://paloalto.roche.com or http://www.roche.us.
KineMed, Inc.
CONTACT: Brent Vaughan, Chief Business Officer, KineMed, Inc., +1-510-655-6525 ext. 110, or Darien E. Wilson, Director, Public Affairs, Roche,+1- 973-562-2232, darien_e.wilson@roche.com, or Justin Jackson of BurnsMcClellan, +1-212-213-0006, jjackson@burnsmc.com
