Collaboration will further boost its promising pipeline of cancer treating therapies

NeoPhore – a company focused on small molecule neoantigen immuno-oncology – has announced that it is collaborating with Professor Chris Lord’s lab at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London.

Under the terms of the agreement, the lab will use NeoPhore's proprietary small molecule inhibitors of DNA mismatch repair (MMR) to explore single agent activity amid tumours with defined genetic backgrounds.

Meanwhile, its promising MMR modulators have the ability to induce neoantigen expression and increase immunogenicity in solid tumours that become sensitive to immunotherapy.

The collaboration will further develop NeoPhore’s discoveries and ongoing research, while boosting its pipeline of cancer treating therapies.

It also becomes the fourth partnership established by NeoPhore during the past six years, having also made reached agreements with St George’s University of London, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the University of Turin.

Dr Matthew Baker, chief executive officer of NeoPhore, was excited about the possibilities of the link-up: “We are excited to collaborate with Professor Chris Lord who is a prominent and respected researcher in the field. Access to his team's scientific expertise will allow us to investigate new mechanisms of action of the MMR pathway in a variety of solid tumours.”

He added: “We believe that this impactful collaboration has the potential to broaden the use of MMR inhibitors beyond neoantigen generation. Ultimately the results of the collaboration have the potential to provide significant patient benefit in a variety of solid tumour indications.”

Professor Chris Lord, ICR’s lead researcher on the project, concluded: “We are excited about this new collaboration with NeoPhore. Identifying new ways of treating cancer is central to much of what we do here at the ICR and this project will focus on exactly that.

“Our hope is that by working with NeoPhore, we can find new vulnerabilities in cancer cells that can be targeted by drugs that NeoPhore has discovered.”

Reference：

https://www.pharmatimes.com/news/icr_in_research_partnership_with_neophore_1490790