Unibioscreen Contracts With PBS-Bio To Further Decipher The Mechanism Of Its Novel Anti-Cancer Drug
Unibioscreen announced that it has entered into an agreement with Predictive Biomarker Sciences (PBS-Bio) to get a more in depth understanding of the mechanism of its anti-cancer drug UNBS1450 as to optimize cancer patient treatment.
PBS-Bio said it is helping more companies develop therapies against a variety of cancers. Most new cancer drugs fail in late-stage studies, and it can take as much as $1 billion and more than a decade to bring the drugs to market.
To jump-start drug development, PBS-Bio’s analysis helps pharmaceutical companies better understand how their drugs work, and identifies biomarkers that can help predict which patients will respond to treatment.
PBS-Bio is providing drug companies with unique real-time looks at how new therapeutics actually work over time within cellular pathways – the so-called mechanisms of action, said Dr. Edward Smith, co-founder and CEO of PBS-Bio, which is a privately held, Mesa, Ariz.-based for-profit corporation.
“We feel that we have reached critical momentum for the growth of PBS-Bio,” said Dr. Smith. “The pharmaceutical industry is failing in their efforts to bring new cancer drugs to patients with only two drugs approved in 2009, and only two so far this year. The problems are empty pipelines, and outdated methods of drug discovery and development. Pharmaceutical companies are now seeing the value of the PBS-Bio dynamic technology to help bring more new cancer drugs to market faster and cheaper.”
Unibioscreen is a Belgian private specialist oncology company with focus on innovative “first in class” oncology therapeutics.
At hospitals in Belgium and the Netherlands, Unibioscreen has begun Phase I clinical trials – first in human tests – with a drug called UNBS1450.
The drug is a hemi-synthetic derivative of a compound identified by Unibioscreen in the root bark of a plant called Calotropis procera.
Pre-clinical tests have shown that UNBS1450 is very effective against various tumor types. Unibioscreen CEO Christiane Verhaegen said the company wants to further decipher the mechanism of action of this novel drug candidate, in parallel with the ongoing clinical Phase I trial, in order to optimize the dose and schedule for the further development stages.
“This is a unique compound, that has shown to be very potent in pre-clinical tests” “It is crucial for us to do the biomarker work with PBS-Bio, as this work helps us to get a more in depth understanding of the mechanism and to define the most effective patient treatment,” Verhaegen said.
Source:
Predictive Biomarker Sciences Inc. (PBS-Bio)
Unibioscreen