MerLion Pharmaceuticals announces collaborative research agreement with the National Cancer Institute

19-Oct-2005

MerLion Pharmaceuticals Pte Ltd announced the establishment of a research collaboration with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the USA. The overall goal of this agreement is the discovery and development of novel small molecule inhibitors of the hypoxic signaling pathway from MerLion's proprietary library of natural products. Under the agreement with the Screening Technologies Branch (STB) of the NCI MerLion has been granted access to assays and cell lines developed at in the laboratories of Dr Robert Shoemaker and Dr. Giovanni Melillo for the molecular marker, Hypoxia Inducible Factor-1 (alpha) (HIF-1(alpha)), which is over-expressed in many human cancers.

HIF-1(alpha) over-expression in biopsies of brain, breast, cervical, esophageal, oropharyngeal and ovarian cancers is correlated with resistance to chemotherapy, radiotherapy and mortality. In addition, over-expression is associated with increased vascularity and tumor progression and has been observed in more than 70% of human cancers and their metastases including bladder, breast, colon, glial, hepatocellular, ovarian, pancreatic, prostate, lung, renal and head and neck cancers

Under this Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), MerLion will perform initial screening and identification of candidate molecules. Both parties may then further investigate and develop these drug candidates for use in potential clinical investigations.

The NCI-STB has a long and well-documented track record in lead discovery from natural products as well as small molecule chemical libraries. More recently the STB has developed a number of cell-based high throughput assays used to identify small molecule inhibitors of molecular targets relevant to cancer growth and angiogenesis.

https://www.bionity.com/en/news/49651/merlion-pharmaceuticals-announces-collaborative-research-agreement-with-the-national-cancer-institute.html