NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The German biotech company Kinaxo Biotechnologies, a spinout of the Max Planck Institute, and Bayer Vital announced today that they have formed a collaboration to identify novel phosphoproteomics biomarkers for predicting cancer treatment outcomes.
The researchers plan to use Kinaxo's quantitative phosphoproteomics technology, PhosphoScout, to find and quantify phosphorylation sites as part of a clinical trial conducted by Bayer Vital on the use of oral anti-cancer drug sorafenib (Nexavar) in acute myeloid leukemia.
The drug, which has already been approved for treating hepatocellular carcinoma and renal cell carcinoma, is known to inhibit several kinases involved in pathways governing cellular growth and blood vessel formation.
For the current study, the team plans to use phosphoproteomics approaches to look at how cellular phosphorylation patterns change in response to drug treatment and to try to find biomarkers for predicting treatment outcomes.
"Both partners aim at investigating innovative technologies (such as phosphoproteomics) and targeted therapies (such as kinase inhibitors) which — in conjunction — should allow more effective cancer treatments and, thus, provide more hope to cancer patients," Erich Enghofer, head of Bayer Healthcare's oncology business unit, said in a statement.