Agreements

* On May 15 2013, Curie-Cancer, the body responsible for developing Institut Curie’s industry partnership activities and the Roche Institute for Research and Translational Medicine are strengthening their collaborative efforts. In 2009, the Institut Curie and Roche signed an initial three-year agreement to partner one another in a major pre-clinical research program. The aim of the partnership was the better understanding of the mechanism of action of a new Roche antibody to target under-served highly aggressive forms of breast cancer. This antibody was the first in a new therapeutic class. The partnership gave Roche access to a platform of pre-clinical models, developed by the research teams at the Institut Curie. These models are highly representative of the tumors observed in patients. Using this platform, Roche was able to determine in which sub-type of breast cancer the antibody was most effective. The Institut Curie also owns the RPPA platform (Reverse Phase Protein Analysis), globally one of the most sophisticated tools of its kind due to the number of cell activity markers it allows users to investigate. Using this platform, researchers were able to gain a more  detailed understanding of the impact of the Roche antibody on the cancer cells at the molecular level, also to identify predictive response markers.

Curie-Cancer and Roche are currently working on several translational research programs involving Roche molecules that make use of the same technology. As one example, a team of Curie-Cancer clinicians, anatomopathologists and researchers are working on developing a new Roche molecule targeting the tumor environment.