BioWorld International Correspondent

LONDON - Cancer Research Technology Ltd. (CRT) said the first projects in its Australian collaboration have been approved and Cancer Therapeutics CRC Pty Ltd. (CTCRC), the company set up to manage the venture, is operational.

The partnership, billed as one of the largest public private collaborations in the world, has A$148 million (US$121.7 million) in funding and pulls together eight of Australia's leading publicly funded cancer research institutes with two companies. London-based CRT will act as the commercialization arm of the collaboration.

Keith Blundy, CEO of CRT, told BioWorld International the model adopted by CTCRC goes well beyond the traditional funding of joint academic/industrial research. "No physical project work has been done yet, but the first projects have been agreed, and they have been chosen on strictly commercial criteria."

One of the first confirmed projects is to discover and develop compounds directed against BNO69, a proprietary angiogenesis target belonging to one of CTCRT's commercial participants, Bionomics Ltd., of Adelaide, Australia.

Deborah Rathjen, Bionomics CEO, said that BN069, discovered four years ago, has been shown to be a potent target in animal studies. "We have previously shown that BNO69 targeting has advantages over other angiogenesis drug targets because it operates at a point where two signaling pathways converge."

The BNO69 program complements another Bionomics program BNC105, which targets existing tumor blood vessels rather than the formation of new tumor blood vessels. That program is on track to enter clinical trials later this year.

Blundy said the selection of this project indicates the strict commercial intent of Melbourne-based CTCRC. "We will operate around a formal system of milestones and deadlines, and will not be afraid to take projects up and then kill them if appropriate."

"This really does go way beyond the usual model for academic/industrial collaboration. We are meant to exploit academic research and to be commercially viable in the long run," said Blundy.

Julian Clark, CEO of CTCRC, said the scarcity of intellectual and financial capital for moving the drug discovery process between the lab bench and the clinical drug development process is Australia's great funding gap. "CTCRC will provide an integrated and coherent pathway for drug discovery, commercialization and clinical development."

Separately, CRT, which is the technology commercialization arm of the charity Cancer Research UK, announced a technology license agreement and collaboration between researchers at University College London (UCL) and Novozymes Delta UK Ltd., of Nottingham, to generate anti-carcinoembryonic antigen single-chain antibody fragment molecules, which will be genetically fused with albumin using Novozymes' albufuse technology.

Research funded by Cancer Research UK has generated MFE-23, which is a high-affinity single-chain antibody fragment against CEA, the tumor-associated antigen that is expressed in a wide variety of cancers including gastro-intestinal tract, breast, lung and prostate. MFE-23 shows exceptional specificity for tumor-associated CEA.

The albufuse technology is expected to enhance the half life, bioavailability and efficacy of UCL's molecules.

CRT will be responsible for commercializing any intellectual property that arises from the project, and will seek an industrial partner for onward development of MFE-23.