Partnering Industry
ECMC locations have forged multiple new links with industry during the year. 125 different companies conducted trials in the ECMC Network in 2013/14, not including partnerships that have been created around technologies and biomarkers.
In Sheffield, colleagues from the departments of Chemistry, Dentistry and Oncology are working in collaboration with a biotechnology company Argenta to carry out preclinical work on a class of novel microtubule agents, which have been developed in Sheffield.
At Southampton, the ECMC facility leveraged additional investment in translational medicine and moved to a purpose built clinical trial evaluation laboratory that incorporates immune monitoring, nutritional endpoints and NGS/informatics capacity. The £1.4m Wessex Investigational Sciences Hub Laboratory hosted both the CRUK Centre for Drug Development and ECMC teams last year.
Southampton ECMC has also formed a partnership with Huntington Life Sciences (UK) for the development of assays to predict cytokine storm in the development of novel immunostimulatory antibodies. As these therapies become more prevalent, predicting this potentially deadly side-effect is of vital importance.
A few of our ECMCs have the capability to manufacture investigational products. Kings has entered into a partnership with Northwest Biotech/Cognate for the GMP production of tumour lysate-pulsed dendritic cells for a Phase III vaccine trial for glioblastoma.
Developing partnerships can provide a view of the expertise residing within the Network. A number of new partnerships have been created around circulating tumour cells (CTCs) and cell free DNA (cfDNA). Manchester ECMC has entered into a £700k partnership with Silicon Biosystems, involving DEPArray™ technology to isolate and molecularly profile individual circulating tumour cells to explore CTC genomic heterogeneity and drug resistance signatures.
Imperial has partnered with AZ Pharma and Roche Diagnostics to fund evaluation of cfDNA to diagnose EGFR mutant lung cancer in patients who are either unfit for or have declined biopsy but are willing to swallow tablets (gefitinib) for liquid biopsy diagnosed EGFR mutant positive lung cancer.
UCL has established a partnership with Gilupi to develop the CellCollector, a device for increasing the yield of circulating tumour cells by sampling the circulating blood volume. Gilupi have provided 1000 devices at no cost to UCL as part of the development partnership (total value of £350,000). Working on circulating cells in neuroendocrine tumours (NETs), UCL are collaborating on a clinical trial with IPSEN which will explore the role of CTCs as response markers in patients with functional mid-gut NETS following therapy with somatostatin analogues. The CTC analysis will be undertaken at the UCL GCLP lab.
Leicester, in collaboration with Synta Pharmaceuticals, will be conducting cfDNA and genome wide copy number variation analysis to support the Galaxy trial.
Barts/Brighton ECMC has formed a partnership around a new trial. ATLANTIS is a personalised therapy study in bladder cancer. In partnership with Exelixis and Astellas, Barts ECMC will run the translational oncology biomarker part of the study supported by a grant of £550,000.
Belfast has entered into a long-term partnership with ALMAC to create an integrated ALMAC/Queens University Belfast Drug Discovery Unit. With additional support from Invest Northern Ireland, the total value of the partnership is £5.5m.