Saturday, August 31, 2019
DarwinHealth today announced a multi-year scientific collaboration with Celgene Corporation ("Celgene") to use algorithms based on quantitative systems biology, technologies that also underpin the evidence of diagnosis approved by the Reforms on the Improvement of Clinical Laboratories (CLIA) of the State of New York in oncology, and novel validated approaches focused on therapies aimed at control points, in order to support clinical development initiatives of Celgene with respect to certain specified compounds.
The research collaboration, known as C2C (Compound-2-Clinic), will implement the proprietary composite / tumor control point matching platform for the DarwinHealth tumor subtype, based on the VIPER, OncoMatch and OncoTreat algorithms, and its high performance drug alteration discovery platform and Plate-Seq to analyze the effects of certain specified compounds.
"The goal of this exciting collaboration," said Andrea Califano , a professor at the Clyde and Helen Wu center and a professor in the Systems Biology department at Columbia University , and co-founder of DarwinHealth. "It is about evaluating, characterizing and prioritizing the bioactivity, relevant for oncology, of certain compounds, using our algorithmic framework in order to identify their mechanism of action (MdA) against master regulator (RM) proteins, which make up the tumor control points of the selected tumor subtypes contemplated in the collaboration. "
As part of the C2C initiative, DarwinHealth will provide a comprehensive reading of the potential clinical value of certain compounds in a specific context of the cancerous tissue, including its mechanism of action throughout the genome and the biomarkers of tumor-specific sensitivity and resistance. Through quantitative modeling it is possible to predict the development trajectory of possible treatments in order to allow a more effective design of clinical trials of Celgene.
"C2C promises to be one of the most fruitful and fundamental scientific collaborations," said Dr. Gideon Bosker, CEO and co-founder of DarwinHealth. "Working hand in hand with Celgene scientists, our goal is to delineate the full range of tumor subtypes (many of which are totally unforeseen), in which Celgene-specific compounds show antitumor activity that can be clinically validated. Identification of the biomarker alignments compound / tumor is the cornerstone of our technology, so this collaboration is exceptionally suitable to exploit our capabilities in the space of cancer drug discovery. " This collaboration can allow Celgene to quickly mature the compounds for clinical trials in humans and commercial development.
"We look forward to collaborating with the DarwinHealth team, using quantitative methodologies that focus on mechanisms that begin to revolutionize the approach to cancer drug discovery," said Rupert Vessey , president of Research and Initial Development at Celgene Corporation. "Using systems biology platforms focused on precision oncology, we believe that this mechanism-centric data can facilitate greater speed and likelihood of success in the successful application of treatment options to cancer patients."
