Aposense Ltd. of Petah Tikva, which develops agents targeting apoptosis (programmed cell death) for molecular imaging and therapy, has announced a collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to evaluate the potential of Aposense's PET tracer ML-10 in monitoring drug activity in clinical studies of cancer therapies. The project is intended to assess the contribution of ML-10 in accelerating clinical development of cancer therapies.
The initial term of the nonexclusive collaboration is for two years and can be extended on certain conditions. Financial terms were not disclosed.
"We are pleased to be working with GSK and view this collaboration as another important step towards making molecular imaging of apoptosis available to noninvasively monitor and potentially personalize anti-cancer therapy," said Aposense CEO Yoram Ashery. "Imaging drug activity in patients and early assessment of its biological effect may help accelerate the development of cancer therapies and reduce development costs."
The cost of developing a new oncology drug has risen to $1.7 billion or more. The rise in costs is mainly because of rising cost of clinical trials and high-attrition rates between phase I trials and approval.
Molecular imaging is potentially an answer to this challenge, due to its ability to non-invasively detect and visualize biological processes in vivo. According to Aposense, the Aposense ML-10 probe has great promise for directly addressing these challenges by imaging apoptosis, a biological process intrinsic to the mechanism of many anti-cancer therapies.
According to IVC, Aposense (Formerly NST) has raised some $44.3 million to date.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on June 10, 2009
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