BioMoti, Pharmidex, and Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have been awarded a £662,222 ($879,497.04) grant by the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK, to support preclinical studies of new therapeutic approaches for hard-to-treat tumors.
Preclinical drug development services will be supported by Pharmidex, a contract research organization (CRO) that BioMoti has worked with over the past seven years, Dr. Davidson Ateh, BioMoti CEO told Outsourcing-Pharma.com.
The two-year program will focus on BMT101 – BioMoti’s lead Oncojan-based ovarian cancer candidate. The company describes Oncojans as a new class of therapeutic microparticles “that target and gain entry to the interior of cancer cells.”
As part of the program, the companies will study immunomodulation and efficacy in immunocompetent models including HGSC (ovarian), TNBC (breast) and PDA (pancreatic), in addition to patient-derived xenograft models, biodistribution, pharmacokinetics and early toxicology.
The funding will also be used to advance pilot studies with undisclosed candidates and to establish a research-scale manufacturing facility. “These are key data sets that should be helpful to enable us to secure pharma partnerships or follow-on investment," Ateh explained.
Pharmidex also aims to develop its drug delivery technologies to help accelerate drug discovery and development processes, he said. “Successful studies could lead the way to co-marketing our platform as a research service to existing Pharmidex clients."