Astex Joins UK Alliance For Development Of New Cancer Drugs
Astex Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Otsuka Pharmaceutical, will join the Cancer Research UK’s Drug Development Office’s Experimental Cancer Medicine Center (ECMC) Combinations Alliance for the development of new treatments against cancer.
The ECMC Alliance selects promising experimental drugs from different pharmaceutical firms to advance into clinical trials. This speeds up the investigation of new drug combinations for patients with urgent unmet medical needs. The trials investigate the new therapies as part of combination therapies along with chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and others.
Dr. Hazel Jones, head of combination therapies at Cancer Research UK, said, “This collaborative partnership with Astex will identify multiple opportunities to improve treatments for cancer patients and presents a fantastic opportunity for clinical researchers to design innovative studies with novel drugs across a range of cancer types. We are focused on increasing the number of partners in this initiative to ensure we offer a wider range of potential treatment options for future patients.”
Astex is the third partner to join the Cancer Research UK’s Alliance along with AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly. The ECMC Network will sponsor and deliver the trials at hospitals across the U.K. The company will provide the Alliance access to select agents under development, as well as additional financial support.
Dr. Nigel Blackburn, Cancer Research UK’s director of drug development, said, “It’s incredibly exciting to have a third partner on board with the Combinations Alliance, giving the opportunity to test new combination therapies in the UK. The ECMC network brings together cancer doctors, nurses, scientists, and trial managers to run clinical trials of new tailored treatments — and it’s thanks to the generosity and time of patients that it’s possible to develop these new approaches, which could benefit thousands of patients in the future and help us beat cancer sooner.”
Dr. Jeremy Carmichael, Astex senior director of business development, said that the company looks forward to working with numerous leading clinical oncologists and clinical centers in the UK via a single network to launch investigator-led combination studies on its candidate anti-cancer compounds.