PhaSER Biomedical and the Sanders TDI partner for clinical drug discovery research

PhaSER will provide 8HUM mouse models for the TDI to accelerate a pipeline of novel therapeutic targets

PhaSER Biomedical has announced its long-term partnership with the Sanders Tri-Institutional Therapeutic Discovery Institute (TDI) to advance the institute’s pre-clinical drug discovery research.

Based in the US, the TDI comprises the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University and Weill Cornell Medicine.

The TDI, first formed in 2013, aims to provide academic investigators with access to industrial-scale tools and techniques, to more effectively accelerate drug discovery and bring new cures to patients with the greatest medical need.

As part of the ten-year agreement, PhaSER will provide 8HUM mouse models for TDI to use to accelerate and improve drug discovery on a pipeline of novel targets in a variety of therapeutic areas.

PhaSER’s 8HUM unique mouse models aim to transform the ways drugs are metabolised in humans and use multiple applications in drug discovery and development, including drug efficacy, the prediction of drug/drug interactions and a more informed design of clinical trials.

In partnership with TDI, the 8HUM models will help to accelerate the discovery and development of new treatments for disease, reduce attrition when drugs reach the clinic and reduce animal use and development costs.

Peter Meinke, director of TDI, Sanders, said: “As animal ‘proof of concept’ studies are integral to TDI data packages demonstrating that drug candidates can successfully alter the course of a disease, we anticipate that these new models will dramatically influence TDI’s efforts to convert novel biology targets into drugs.”

Founder of PhaSER, professor Roland Wolf, commented: “We are now looking forward to providing these valuable mice to drug discovery groups within TDI to accelerate and improve the institute’s drug discovery activities.”

In February, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded PhaSER a $2.3m grant to accelerate drug discovery and development, using PhaSER’s 8HUM technology to humanise mouse models for key pathways involved in the metabolism and disposition of drugs to combat diseases including malaria, tuberculosis and HIV.