Taris Biomedical, a specialty pharmaceutical company developing innovative, targeted therapies to treat bladder diseases with high unmet medical need, has entered into a research collaboration with AstraZeneca to evaluate novel treatments for bladder cancer.

Under the terms of the agreement, the companies will work together to evaluate multiple novel cancer therapeutics by employing the Taris proprietary bladder delivery platform in combination with targeted cancer therapeutics from AstraZeneca .

The Taris delivery platform is a soft, flexible system deployed into and retrieved from the bladder using standard urological office procedures. It is designed to provide continuous local delivery to the bladder for days to weeks, depending on t he therapeutic application. Furthermore, AstraZeneca has an exclusive option to take a license to the products resulting from the collaboration.

"We are excited to collaborate with AstraZeneca, a leading global biopharmaceutical company committed to developing innovative cancer medicines,” said Purnanand Sarma, president and CEO, Taris Biomedical. “Through this collaboration, Taris will have the opportunity to evaluate its proprietary bladder delivery platform in an oncology setting, potentially providing multiple novel product candidates to treat bladder cancer. Treatment options in bladder cancer are poor, and we believe our technology has the potential to revolutionize the treatment in this area. Collaboration with AstraZeneca is a validation of the potential of our technology, and leverages the Taris know how in bladder delivery and bladder cancer, one of the several therapeutic areas of focus for the company.”

“AstraZeneca is committed to the development of innovative medicines for the treatment o f cancer that make a meaningful difference to the lives of cancer patients ,” said Susan Galbraith, head of the oncology innovative medicines Unit at AstraZeneca. “ We are excited to have the opportunity to collaborate with Taris because their novel technology has the potential to enable the delivery of the right drugs to the tumour tissue in the right concentration and over a prolonged period. This could combine the ability to target both the right tissue the tumour, with the right geneticall y targeted therapy and therefore represent a step change in the treatment of this disease.”

Bladder diseases, which are difficult to treat with systemic therapies, affect 6 0 million people in the US alone. These diseases include interstitial cystitis (IC) /bladder pain syndrome (BPS), bladder cancer, overactive bladder, urinary tract infections and chronic pelvic pain syndromes .

Bladder cancer is difficult to treat, and there is a high unmet medical need. I n man y cases patients undergo repeated surgeries including removal of the bladder. The knowledge of the different genetic abnormalities which drive bladder cancer growth in different patients is enabling the development of better targeted therapies.