Servier Enters R&D Partnership To Find Effective Blood Cancer Treatments
By Lori Clapper
French pharmaceutical company Servier and the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Australia’s oldest medical research organization, have entered into a partnership to develop new agents specifically targeted to treat blood cancers, as well as other types of the disease.
As part of the collaboration, researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute will test how cancer cells respond to Mcl-1-inhibitory BH3-mimetics in preclinical models. Mcl-1-inhibitory BH3-mimetics is a new class of compounds discovered by Servier and U.K.-based Vernalis. The companies aim to find the effectiveness of the new compound in treating patients with cancer and to narrow down the types of cancer that the compound is best suited to treat.
“Mcl-1 is a promising therapeutic target for many types of cancer. There is a considerable body of experimental evidence pinpointing Mcl-1 as the Achilles’ heel for many cancers, particularly blood cancers,” Associate Professor Lessene at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute said. “Institute researchers made the initial discovery explaining how Bcl-2 played a role in cancer more than 20 years ago. We have been at the forefront of research revealing how the Bcl-2 family promotes cancer development and treatment resistance and have provided considerable experience in evaluating and developing potential anti-cancer agents, including BH3-mimetics.”
In a joint statement, Servier’s Jean-Pierre Abastado, Head of the Oncology Pole and Olivier Geneste, Director of Apoptosis Programs, commented that the discovery of research compounds like Mcl-1 signifies the company’s commitment to find new drugs that target the Bcl-2 family of inhibitors of apoptosis.
“We are convinced that our collaboration with the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute will generate critical data and ideas helping the development of our anti Mcl-1 drug candidates and that our joint research efforts will facilitate bringing a highly innovative treatment to cancer patients,” Abastado added.
The new partnership comes less than two weeks after Servier and Pharmacyclics mutually dissolved another cancer treatment collaboration focused on Pharmacyclics' pan-HDAC inhibitor compounds involving abexinostat. After ending the agreement, global development and commercialization rights of pan-HDAC were returned to Pharmacyclics.
Servier’s current cancer drug research and development focuses on Cytotoxic agents, Angiogenesis, Cell cycle, and Apoptosis.