Under funding from Cancer Research UK, researchers in Professor Frances Balkwill’s lab at Barts Cancer Institute/ Queen Mary University of London, made the fortuitous and surprising discovery that the chemokine receptor CCR4 was over-expressed in tissue from some cervical cancer patients.
With assistance from CRT Business Management, Fran was able to team up with CRT’s Discovery Laboratories based at UCL, to look at gene expression of CCR4 in other cancers, and discovered striking over-expression in a number of other tumour types including renal, brain and oesophageal.
These observations were entirely unexpected as until that point CCR4 expression was only associated with certain cells of the immune system.
On the basis of the discoveries, CRT filed a patent on CCR4 as a target and diagnostic marker in solid tumours, and Fran made a successful application to Cancer Research UK’s Discovery Committee to undertake further target validation studies, with a focus on renal cancer.
Renal cancer remains an area of high unmet medical need, with poor survival rates and a limited number of targeted therapies.
Under the grant, Moddasar Khan, one of Fran’s researchers, worked with siRNA and small molecule inhibitors of CCR4 to clearly demonstrate the anti-cancer benefits of inhibiting this receptor.
In early 2010, CRT, through its network of industry contacts, initiated discussions with the antibody discovery company Affitech, who themselves have interest and expertise in G-protein coupled receptors, the family to which CCR4 belongs. Coincidentally, one of their lead antibody programmes was a function blocking CCR4 antibody (known as AT008) that was at the time in development for haematological cancers.
On the basis of the data generated by Fran’s group under the Discovery Committee award, a sponsored collaboration was established at Queen Mary University of London to progress Affitech’s antibody through pre-clinical studies in renal cancer. In April 2011, CRT entered into a license with Affitech allowing them rights to the data and patent filing with the hope that the outcome may be an exciting new agent reaching renal cancer patients.
According to Affitech’s Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Alexander Duncan, “This has been an important license deal combining Cancer Research UK’s world-class research expertise in the exciting area of chemokine research with the development of Affitech’s anti-CCR4 antibody program (AT008). We have embarked on an ambitious program to understand the mechanisms of action of our anti-CCR4 antibody program and its potential utility in cancer, particularly certain solid tumours, and possibly also in further disease indications. We are very pleased to have secured the interest and participation of an outstanding investigator at the forefront of cancer research and are delighted with the progress of both the research collaboration as well as the good interactions that has been built between Affitech and CRT, the license and patent arm of Cancer Research UK, as we move into testing this potentially important new compound in the treatment of seriously affected patients.”
View the CRT/Affitech press announcement.
March 29 2012 - Read article ›
© Cancer Research Technology 2012