NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – NuView Life Sciences and Otsuka Pharmaceutical said today they have reached a global licensing and collaboration deal to further develop and commercialize NuView's genomic-based diagnostic biomarker for detecting breast and prostate cancer.
Otsuka will provide funding for all future clinical trials and the commercialization of the VPAC1 biomarker worldwide. It plans on using NuView's manufacturing subsidiary, US Radiopharmaceuticals, to meet requirements for clinical trials and commercialization, and the partners anticipate beginning a Phase I trial in the US within the next few months, NuView said.
The deal includes all other future diagnostic-imaging applications for VPAC1. NuView retains all rights for the VPAC1 compound for in vivo therapeutic delivery and in vitro urine screening applications.
The biomarker was developed by Thomas Jefferson University researcher Mathew Thakur and has shown diagnostic accuracy and sensitivity in preliminary studies. It binds only to those cells indicative of cancer, and the absence of a binding activity may suggest that a patient has a non-cancer-related medical condition, NuView said.
Based on preliminary human studies, NuView's VPAC1 agent could be used by physicians to determine whether a patient has breast or prostate cancer, reducing the overdiagnosis of the conditions and unnecessary surgical biopsies, the Park City, Utah-based biopharmaceutical firm added.
Otsuka Pharmaceutical is a wholly owned subsidiary of Otsuka Holdings, the holding company for Tokyo-based Otsuka Group.