HuMurine Technologies Awarded $299,956 Grant from the National Cancer Institute to Evaluate Immunotherapies in “Humanized” Immune System Mice
Sacramento, CA (PRWEB) April 12, 2016 -- HuMurine Technologies today announced that it has been awarded a SBIR Phase I grant by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for evaluation of novel immuno-modulatory compounds against patient-derived xenografts (PDX) using “humanized” immune system mice (Hu-M™ mouse). The NCI is one of the 27 institutes and centers that comprise the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
HuMurine will develop and validate a pre-clinical platform by combining PDX tumors and HuMurine’s proprietary humanized NOG and hGM-CSF/hIL3 NOG mouse (Hu-M™ and Hu-3GM™ mouse) to perform efficacy and safety studies for novel anti-cancer immunotherapeutics. HuMurine has partnered with Champions Oncology (CSBR), an innovative leader in the utilization of large, clinically relevant PDX tumor banks and predictive PDX models, and ProImmune, developers of the novel Pro5® MHC Pentamer technology, to validate the platform with the ultimate goal of expeditiously advancing high value immunotherapeutics into the clinic. Accurate modeling of the response of a patient’s cancer to immunotherapy reduces failures of anti-cancer drugs during clinical trials and allows for tailoring of clinical drug combinations for each individual.
"We are very grateful and excited that the NCI has chosen HuMurine for this award through the SBIR program and more importantly has recognized HuMurine’s industry-leading expertise in commercializing the humanized mouse platform”, said Dr. Gerold Feuer, Ph.D., Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of HuMurine Technologies. “This award will allow us to create and validate a platform to gauge efficacy and preliminary safety assessment of immunotherapies in a humanized immune system setting. We also thank our partners, Champions Oncology and ProImmune, for their collaborations and support on this award and we look forward to working with them closely to execute the study”.
“We are very confident that these studies will be commercially relevant in immuno-oncology which has seen tremendous investment from almost every major pharmaceutical company within the last year”, said Dr. Prabal Banerjee, Ph.D., HuMurine’s Chief Technology Officer. “We also thank UC Davis and the Institution for Regenerative Cures (IRC) for supporting HuMurine as an ‘Industry Partner’ and we hope to further advance stem cell sciences with this award. We have also recently acquired an exclusive commercial license for the hGM-CSF/hIL3 NOG mice from Taconic Biosciences to complement our existing NOG license and plan to use this strain to develop a PDX/Humanized mouse model that will more accurately recapitulate the human tumor microenvironment”.
The SBIR program provides federal funding to small Research/R&D businesses that have a potential for commercialization. HuMurine Technologies has received this grant funding to work closely with the National Institutes of Health commercialization team to scale up and commercialize this novel technology platform. The Phase I grant is being funded by award 1R43CA200096-01A1. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
About HuMurine Technologies, Inc.:
HuMurine Technologies, Inc. is a technology leader in standardization and commercialization of ‘humanized’ immune system mice for the advancement in testing of oncology drugs, gene therapies and agents to promote hematopoiesis. HuMurine offers contract research services in cancer biology (immunotherapy), infectious diseases (vaccines or antiviral therapies), inflammation (cytokine release syndrome, immunity assessment), assessment of immune response against human restricted diseases (human antibody or T cell response), and gene therapies. The company’s flagship platform is the Humanized Immune System NOG (Hu-M™) mouse and also includes the humanized GM-CSF/hIL3 NOG mouse (Hu-3GM™ mouse) which have wide ranging applications in the field of basic and applied human disease research.
For more information on HuMurine Technologies, visit: http://humurine.com
Media Inquiries:
Susan Estrada
640 Arrow Highway
LaVerne, CA 91750
Phone: 909-971-7525
http://www.humurine.com
###
Gerold Feuer, Humurine Technologies, http://www.humurine.com, +1 315-440-8579, [email protected]
Share this article