Minomic forges prostate cancer partnership
Minomic International has entered a partnership with US-based Catalent Pharma Solutions aimed at developing a potential new treatment for prostate cancer.
The companies have agreed to jointly develop Minomic’s MIL-38 - the antibody drug conjugate used in its prostate cancer screening test MiSat - into a potential therapeutic product.
Catalent will use its GPEx cell line retrovector to redesign MIL-38 as a therapeutic antibody for a clinical study, which will commence as early as the second quarter of 2015.
Minomic CEO Dr Brad Walsh said preclinical trials of MIL-38 as a therapeutic have been “extremely promising. Our ultimate aim is to leverage our existing technology to not only screen for prostate cancer, but to treat it.”
Minomic is gearing up for a 1200-sample trial of the MiSat diagnostic test in the US that will form part of the company’s submission with the US FDA and be used to help market the test to potential partners or licensees.
Previous studies suggest that MiSat is almost twice as specific as the current standard prostate cancer screening test, PSA, which is controversial due to its high false-positive rate.
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