Oxford BioMedica, a leading gene therapy company, has signed a license agreement with Children's Hospital Boston to extend the company's existing rights for the anti-angiogenic genes, endostatin and angiostatin, for the treatment of cancer using gene therapy.
Angiogenesis, which is the formation of new blood vessels, is a critical mechanism for tumour progression. It has been clinically proven that tumour growth can be suppressed by using anti-angiogenic approaches to inhibit tumour angiogenesis. Endostatin and angiostatin are endogenous anti-angiogenic proteins discovered in the laboratory of Dr. Judah Folkman, director of the Vascular Biology Program at Children's Hospital Boston.
Oxford BioMedica previously licensed the endostatin and angiostatin genes for its RetinoStat product candidate for the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD) and other ocular diseases associated with aberrant blood vessel growth. The RetinoStat programme is expected to enter clinical development in 2008 for wet AMD.
Under the terms of the new license agreement with Children's Hospital Boston, Oxford BioMedica will pay an upfront payment, milestone payments and royalties on sales. Further details were not disclosed.
In a separate agreement, also announced, Children's Hospital, Boston has agreed to subscribe for a total of 243,306 ordinary shares of 1p each at £0.4075 per share. Application will be made to the United Kingdom Listing Authority ('UKLA') for the newly issued ordinary shares in Oxford BioMedica to be admitted to the Official List of the UKLA and to the London Stock Exchange plc for admission to trading on its market for listed securities. The shares are expected to commence trading on 12 July 2007.
Oxford BioMedica is a biopharmaceutical company specialising in the development and commercialisation of novel therapeutic vaccines and gene-based therapies with a focus on oncology and neurotherapy. The company was established in 1995 as a spin-out from Oxford University, and is listed on the London Stock Exchange.