Porvair Sciences reports on its involvement in a new £2.6 million project led by Swansea University (UK) that aims to dramatically improve the diagnosis and treatment of ovarian cancer.
This project will involve collaboration with five key industrial partners - Porvair Sciences, Bruker UK, GE Healthcare UK, Axis Bio and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). A new antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) company will join the project in its second year. ADCs are a powerful new class of therapeutics in medical oncology, where antibodies that target specific cancers are coupled with cytotoxic agents. The Cluster for Epigenomic and Antibody Drug Conjugate Therapeutics (CEAT) project aims to utilise novel epigenetic drugs and ADCs to manipulate chemical compounds, thus creating a new route for the treatment of ovarian cancer.
Usng its Chromatrap bead-free Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) technology Porvair Sciences will develop new epigenomic profiling approaches that will deliver the required advances in cutting-edge drug development and patient profiling. The company will work with Swansea University and industrial partners to identify and characterise epigenetic drugs that are effective in preventing cancer development in ovarian cancer models. In addition, it will support the evaluation of the ADCs resulting from the CEAT project.
CEAT principal investigator, Dr. Lewis Francis from Swansea University's School of Medicine, commented, "Epigenetics involves chemical changes to the DNA and associated proteins that can lead to genes being turned on or off. In some cases, this can go wrong and lead to disease. Through the CEAT project, Swansea University will work closely with CEAT partners to develop drugs that can control epigenetic signals; these epigenetic drugs can be targeted specifically towards ovarian cancer cells where epigenetic changes have occurred."
