NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Life science firm MetaStat today said it has executed two additional license agreements covering patent applications and technology from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University.
The additional license agreements are for US Patent Application Nos. 12/998,237 and 11/659,514, as well as a provisional US patent application.
The '237 patent application, titled, "An in vivo quantitative screening test for anti-metastasis treatment efficacy," describes methods for evaluating the effectiveness of a cancer treatment for inhibiting metastasis in a patient, inhibiting local cancer cell treatment, and inhibiting cancer cell proliferation, according to its abstract.
MetaStat said the technology could provide it and its drug-development partners tools to develop a new generation of anti-metastatic drugs. No US Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs currently exist for targeting and killing metastatic cells, the company said.
The '514 patent application, titled, "Isolation, gene expression, and chemotherapeutic resistance of motile cancer cells," pertains to methods for isolating motile cells from animal tissue, determining MRNA or protein expression of a gene in motile cells, and determining whether a cancer in a tissue is likely to metastasize, according to its abstract. Also provided are methods for inhibiting metastasis of a cancer and determining resistance of a motile cancer cell population to a chemotherapeutic agent.
MetaStat said it believes the technology is the first method for isolating, collecting, genetically profiling, and determining chemotherapeutic resistance of a "pure population" of metastatic cancer cells from a tumor.
Lastly, the provisional patent application, titled, "Human invasion signature for prognosis of metastatic risk," describes "the actual causative gene signature of metastatic cells," MetaStat said. The invention is for assessing cancer recurrence risk through correlative mathematical algorithms developed through the statistical analysis of whole tumor tissue samples.
Together, the three technologies expand MetaStat's IP in the field of highly metastatic cells, it said.
Based in The Woodlands, Texas, the company develops and commercializes clinical diagnostic tests for the prediction of systemic hematogenous metastasis of cancer and their companion therapeutics.