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news.Medical Prognosis Institute (MPI) and Alion Pharmaceuticals have entered into a partnership to develop a specific Drug Response Predictor (DRP) to identify cancer patients likely to respond to an undisclosed ion channel inhibitor to treat certain cancers.
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DRP, which is a highly validated systems-biology-based biomarker platform, has been developed by MPI and it is useful for identifying likely responding patients for targeted enrollment of cancer drug clinical trials.
MPI CEO Peter Buhl Jensen said: "We are thrilled to partner with Alion in order to advance the clinical development of its promising ion channel inhibitor, and to advance a new paradigm in cancer drug development by designing and conducting clinical trials around a targeted population of patients identified, via our diagnostic platform, as the patients most likely to respond to this drug based on their tumor biology."
Alternatively, Alion is developing a pipeline of new ion channel inhibiting compounds to treat certain cancers.
The company said that iron channels regulate specific stages of cancer establishment and progression while blocking channel activity impairs the growth of some tumors.
As part of the deal, MPI will use its DRP platform technology to identify a predictive biomarker specific for Alion’s lead ion channel inhibitor, and the developed biomarker would be used to select and enroll likely-responder patients in a Phase I trial for the drug.