NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Vyriad announced today that it has partnered with Imanis Life Sciences to develop in vitro and in vivo tests to predict a patient's likelihood of responding to its oncolytic virus therapeutics.
Vyriad is developing cancer treatments that use vesicular stomatitis and measles viruses modified with genes encoding known tumor antigens in order to trigger anticancer immune responses.
Under the terms of their agreement, Imanis will use its proprietary virology technology to develop and preclinically validate companion diagnostics that can predict whether a cancer patient will respond to oncolytic virotherapy.
Vyriad expects to select one or two of the tests for further validation in clinical trials of its drug candidates beginning next year, and will be responsible for securing regulatory clearance for the diagnostics in human and veterinary medicine settings. Imanis will also grant Vyriad a non-exclusive license to its technology for any approved test.
Further terms of the deal were not disclosed.
"For the first time, we will be able to focus our efforts on those patients with a higher probability of deriving clinical benefit from our drugs while avoiding treating patients that are not likely to respond to them," Vyriad CEO Stephen Russell said in a statement. "We strongly expect that pairing our oncolytic virotherapies with theranostic tests being developed in this collaboration will greatly accelerate the pathway to FDA marketing approval for our oncolytic virotherapy products."