OSI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced that they have entered into a small molecule drug discovery and translational research collaboration.
According to an official press release, the alliance is anchored around developing molecular targeted therapies that target the underlying mechanisms of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in cancer, a process of emerging significance in tumour development and disease progression and the focal point of OSI's proprietary oncology research efforts. The companies will collaborate to develop proprietary target-driven tumour models for use in drug screening and biomarker validation, and intend to deploy these systems in support of OSI drug discovery and clinical programmes.
Under the terms of the agreement, OSI will pay AVEO a total upfront of $10 million in cash and purchase equity valued at approximately $5 million. OSI will also pay AVEO research funding, and milestones and royalties upon successful development and commercialization of products from the collaboration.
"We are delighted to announce this collaboration with AVEO," stated Colin Goddard, Ph.D., chief executive officer of OSI Pharmaceuticals. "AVEO's unique suite of in vivo models and associated research tools ideally supplements and complements our own rapidly emerging expertise in EMT. The collaboration fits squarely within our strategic and financial planning goals which seek to build fundamental shareholder value by emphasizing - in addition to execution on our Tarceva program, financial performance and developing and owning our own core pipeline assets - the need to establish a strong, differentiated research platform."
"We are very pleased to collaborate with OSI to further demonstrate the utility of our rich target database and our proprietary Human Response Prediction(TM) (HRP(TM)) platform," stated Tuan Ha-Ngoc, president and chief executive officer of AVEO. "This latest collaboration underscores the substantial opportunity that our expertise in cancer genetics and unique platform provide to increase the efficiency and probability of success in oncology drug discovery and development. Select collaborations on our novel HRP(TM) platform allow us to maximize and enhance the value of our intellectual property while we concurrently apply HRP(TM) to build and advance our own pipeline of oncology drug candidates."
As part of the collaboration, OSI will provide expertise in defining EMT in both AVEO models and in human tumour tissue. AVEO will provide access to its extensive databases of tumour targets identified from AVEO genetic screens, focusing on tumour maintenance genes that drive EMT. AVEO will further utilize its HRP(TM) platform to develop in vivo tumour models driven by the EMT target genes of interest, validating key EMT targets and creating critical tools for drug discovery and translational research.
OSI will conduct small molecule drug discovery programs on a defined number of EMT and tumour-maintenance targets validated by AVEO. The companies will collaborate on translational research programs concerning key OSI development programs. OSI will be responsible for the development and commercialization of all clinical candidates from the collaboration. Rights to antibodies and antibody-related biologics against those targets are retained by AVEO.
Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT), and its reverse Mesenchymal-to-Epithelial transition (MET), are important phenomena in developmental biology that are increasingly associated with tumour biology. EMT is thought to be a marker of tumour progression, with tumours that express mesenchymal markers having a greater tendency to be invasive and metastasize than those tumours only expressing epithelial markers. OSI's interest in EMT derived from its translational research efforts into better understanding which patients optimally benefit from therapy with the company's flagship product, Tarceva (erlotinib). Because mesenchymal tumour cells co-opt different sets of oncogenic signalling pathways, EMT targets represent a novel therapeutic opportunity in an area of significant unmet medical need. OSI has surmised that understanding and targeting the dynamic biological processes of EMT has offered it the opportunity to establish a highly differentiated, industry leading position as the organization best able to capitalize on this emerging field of oncology research. The company has focused its oncology research on discovering and validating EMT related targets; developing novel therapies - and combinations of therapies - against these EMT targets; developing specialized animal models that recapitulate EMT processes; and identifying and validating biomarkers to support these programmes. The company believes that developing a differentiated and industry leading technology platform for its oncology research efforts is an essential component in establishing the strategic value of OSI's oncology franchise.
AVEO utilizes proprietary, inducible in-vivo cancer models to identify and validate novel drug targets, support lead development and validate biomarkers to help guide drug development. The animal models are developed in a manner that offers more biological context than more traditional xenograft models and - since EMT is a context specific biological phenomenon - are likely to provide powerful tools to support the OSI/AVEO collaborative programmes.