Skip to main content
Premium Trial:

Request an Annual Quote

MDRNA Expands Bladder Cancer Collaboration with Vancouver Prostate Centre

Premium

MDRNA said last week that it has extended and expanded its collaboration with the Vancouver Prostate Centre to discover and develop RNAi-based drugs for bladder cancer.

The company said it first began working with VPC in 2008 to investigate the use of its DiLA2 delivery platform and UsiRNA molecules in one of the center's bladder cancer models.

"In light of current results demonstrating efficient delivery and high potency for RNAi, the program will expand to evaluate UsiRNAs targeting other critical pathways in cancer, the impact on tumor biology, tumor growth, and survival rates," MDRNA said.

Earlier this year, MDRNA announced that it had added bladder cancer to its formal pipeline after its collaboration with VPC had yielded positive results in a rodent model of bladder cancer (see RNAi News, 8/6/2009).

MDRNA has said that it could file an investigational new drug application to begin human trials of the bladder cancer therapy next year.

The Scan

Genetic Testing Approach Explores Origins of Blastocyst Aneuploidy

Investigators in AJHG distinguish between aneuploidy events related to meiotic missegregation in haploid cells and those involving post-zygotic mitotic errors and mosaicism.

Study Looks at Parent Uncertainties After Children's Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Diagnoses

A qualitative study in EJHG looks at personal, practical, scientific, and existential uncertainties in parents as their children go through SCID diagnoses, treatment, and post-treatment stages.

Antimicrobial Resistance Study Highlights Key Protein Domains

By screening diverse versions of an outer membrane porin protein in Vibrio cholerae, researchers in PLOS Genetics flagged protein domain regions influencing antimicrobial resistance.

Latent HIV Found in White Blood Cells of Individuals on Long-Term Treatments

Researchers in Nature Microbiology find HIV genetic material in monocyte white blood cells and in macrophages that differentiated from them in individuals on HIV-suppressive treatment.