Tessellate BIO Enters into Collaboration with Omico and CMRI to Advance Precision Therapies
Tuesday, October 01, 2024
Tessellate BIO has announced a collaboration with the Children's Medical Research Institute (CMRI), a prominent Australian pediatric research institute, and Omico, a network connecting over 50 leading cancer institutes across Australia and New Zealand.
Tessellate BIO is developing new therapies aimed at treating ALT-positive cancers, and this collaboration reinforces its position in ALT biology and drug discovery.
This partnership aims to deepen the understanding of the Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres (ALT) mechanism across various tumor types and investigate the genetic factors involved.
ALT enables certain cancer cells to maintain their telomeres during division, ensuring continued replication. The collaboration will build upon previous research conducted with Tessellate BIO co-founder, Professor Hilda Pickett, at CMRI.
The project utilizes a large genomically-characterized patient sample cohort gathered by Omico through its MoST (Cancer Molecular Screening and Therapeutics) program. These samples have facilitated the exploration of ALT prevalence in primary tissue samples using the C-Circle Assay, which is poised to become the gold standard for detecting ALT status.
While ALT is known to occur in 10 to 15% of all cancers, its study has largely been limited to cancers with high ALT prevalence, such as soft tissue sarcomas and osteosarcomas. Early results from the Tessellate BIO, Omico, and CMRI collaboration suggest the presence of ALT in cancers previously not linked to this telomere maintenance mechanism.
The joint effort will also support the validation of the C-Circle Assay as a screening tool for identifying ALT-positive patients, with the ultimate goal of establishing it as the clinical standard for precision medicine.
The collaboration also seeks to expand the application of synthetic lethality beyond Homologous Recombination Deficiency (HRD) to ALT-positive cancers.
The partners aim to develop new therapies and companion diagnostics for these cancers, with findings to be shared with the wider scientific community.
Tessellate BIO expects that the results of this partnership will contribute to more effective therapies for patients with ALT-positive cancers, providing better outcomes through targeted treatment. Findings from this collaboration are expected to be published in the future.
Source: tessellatebio.com
