NantBioScience licenses Colorado research

Colorado University has signed a research collaboration and exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with NantBioScience for its research into Ral proteins. Ral proteins are a crucial part of tumour growth and metastasis in more than a third of cancers.

The agreement will have the university and the US-based biopharmaceutical work together to bring the new Ral inhibitors, dubbed BQU57, to market. Financial details of the agreement have not been disclosed.

The compound was developed at Colorado University’s Comprehensive Cancer Centre, where the researchers successfully inhibited cancer growth in human cell lines.

Shahrooz Rabizadeh, chief scientific officer at NantBioScience, said: “NantBioScience is committed to the discovery and development of cancer fighting therapies that target the key drivers and root causes of tumour growth and spread. Targeting the Ral protein expands our ongoing efforts to silence a key pathway, the RAS pathway, that has been found to be altered and constitutively activated in one out of three cancers. We are pleased to be partnering with Colorado University, leaders in the science of inhibiting Ral function, to accelerate the development of novel cancer medicines for patients.”

Dan Theodorescu, director of the Comprehensive Cancer Centre, said: “We are excited to partner with NantBioScience to one day bring our basic research of Ral protein inhibitors to the bedside of patients in the form of a new cancer fighting treatment.”