Alethia Biotherapeutics Inc., a privately held biotechnology company, has signed an exclusive collaborative agreement with Biosite Incorporated of San Diego for the development of recombinant monoclonal antibodies against validated targets in ovarian cancer.

Under the terms of the collaboration, Alethia will provide Biosite with access to highly specific functional targets that will be evaluated as markers for ovarian cancer. In return, Biosite will provide Alethia with monoclonal antibodies for validated disease-specific targets to accelerate Alethia's therapeutic research development.

"We are extremely excited about this partnership with Biosite," said Mario Filion, executive vice president and chief scientific officer of Alethia. "The development of monoclonal antibodies is directly in line with our drug development strategy to provide disease-specific targets for focused therapeutics. The outcome of this collaboration will constitute the first candidate leads to achieve this objective."

Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death among gynaecological cancers and is rarely diagnosed in its early stages. Considering that the five-year survival rate for all stages is only 35 per cent to 38 per cent, there are urgent needs to develop better tools for earlier detection and for targeted therapies. Alethia has developed a functional genomics approach to identify new and more specific molecular targets that directly address these unmet medical needs. Based on this discovery effort, a diverse collection of highly specific ovarian cancer targets has been prioritised on the basis of their tissue-specific expression profiles and subjected to validation as potential drug targets. Monoclonal antibodies generated against Alethia's specific targets could contribute to improving early detection as well as providing focused therapeutic strategies.

"This agreement is very strategic for our company," said Yves Cornellier, Alethia's president and chief executive officer. "It will further accelerate our migration from a pure discovery platform player to a full product development organization. Furthermore, this transaction, with such a reputable firm, validates not only the quality of the research done internally, but also the high value and potential of our therapeutic targets." The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.