NEW YORK – Singapore-based biopharmaceutical company Avatamed has entered into a cross-border, public-private consortium to advance precision oncology research. The partnership joins Avatamed with Austria-based biomarker research company CBmed, South Korea-based company Aimedbio, Japanese lab instruments firm Shimadzu, and two Austria-based scientific partners, The Medical Universities of Graz and Vienna and the Health Institute of Joanneum Research.
Though the company has already been involved in multinational collaboration through the PuRPOSE Program spanning South Korea's Samsung Cancer Center and four Singapore institutions, the new consortium marks its first partnership involving Europe. The explicit aim of the three-year partnership is to advance research into personalized treatments for patients who experience disease progression after standard-of-care – a goal for which the partnered companies and institutions plan to leverage a new technological infrastructure as well as a new drug screening lab within the partially government-funded CBmed. The partnership will allow for the transfer of knowledge in precision oncology research, ultimately expanding to include additional European oncology divisions and pharmaceutical companies.
"In the near future, we want to provide our patients with the right treatment at the right time with the right dosage," Peter Schemmer of The Medical University of Graz and Do-Hyun Nam, CEO of Aimedbio, jointly said in a statement. Schemmer added that his institution's precision oncology activities currently include metabolomics analysis in addition to drug screening and genomic data analysis from CBmed.
"We are excited to have the first European collaboration project with CBmed in Graz, Austria under the explosive space of precision oncology," Avatamed CEO Young Yun said in a statement. "Our collaboration outcomes shall provide another milestone … for both organizations."
Avatamed anticipates that the partnership's new technological infrastructure, as well as CBmed's new drug screening lab, will be complete by October 2020.