Atugen will select and screen specially designed antisense oligonucleotides and optimise cellular delivery in order to provide tools to validate several novel cancer targets
Atugen and Metagen Pharmaceuticals have announced that they have signed an agreement to evaluate the application of Atugen's target validation technology in research and development of Metagen's novel cancer drug targets.
Atugen will select and screen specially designed antisense oligonucleotides and optimise cellular delivery in order to provide tools to validate several novel cancer targets identified by Metagen.
Subsequently, Metagen will use those optimised GeneBloc antisense molecules to evaluate the function of the cancer targets in cellular and animal models. No financial details were disclosed.
"This collaboration should provide Metagen with an excellent opportunity to apply our knockdown technologies to targets which may play a vital role in future cancer therapies," stated Klaus Giese, Atugen's chief scientific officer and vice president of research.
"We believe this will prove to be the beginning of a long and mutually beneficial collaboration between our two companies." "Atugen's GeneBloc technology is a reliable and proven validation tool for novel disease targets," said Jurg Ambuhl, chief executive officer of Metagen.
"This agreement will allow us to accelerate validation of potentially novel and clinically relevant targets so that these can be rapidly moved into the drug development process." Atugen, located in Berlin, Germany, is a technology leader in disease pathway elucidation.
Its drug discovery research tools are made available to the biopharma industry through a variety of research collaborations including alliances to develop its own in-house pipeline.
atugen has proven its technology by establishing a portfolio of validated targets and compounds inhibiting the PI 3-kinase pathway.
This disease pathway plays an important role in most cancer types, diabetes, wound healing and other indications.
The company offers proprietary KnockDown technologies (antisense molecules ie GeneBlocs, improved synthetic siRNA, vector expression systems for siRNA and ribozymes and superior transfection reagents).
