NEW YORK (Genomeweb News) – French firm Erytech Pharma today said that it will collaborate with MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston on the development of a companion diagnostic for the firm's anticancer drug candidate.
The companion diagnostic would be used to determine which patients would be most likely to respond to the company's Graspa therapy, which consists of red blood cell-encapsulated L-asparaginase (L-ASP). The drug is already used in leukemia chemotherapy regimens, but Erytech also is developing it for treatment of solid tumors.
John Weinstein, chair of the department of bioinformatics and computational biology at MD Anderson, said that researchers at the center have identified a candidate biomarker, asparagine synthetase, that may predict L-ASP activity against solid tumors.