Date: 2016-03-30
Type of information: Licensing agreement
Compound: pharmaceutical candidates involving bacterial strains that activate Th17 cells
Company: Vedanta Biosciences (USA - MA) RIKKEN (Japan) Azabu University (Japan)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology - Immunological diseases - Infectious diseases
Type agreement: licensing
Action mechanism: microbiome therapeutic. Kenya Honda and colleagues have identified and isolated bacterial strains from humans that can induce Th17 cells and demonstrated that these strains induce Th17 responses by adhering to cells in the intestine. Their resarch show that adhesion of microbes to intestinal epithelial cells is a critical for Th17 induction. A mixture of 20 bacterial strains has been selected and isolated from fecal samples of a patient with ulcerative colitis on the basis of their ability to cause a robust induction of Th17 cells in the mouse colon. Details on the technology were published in October 2015 in Cell.
Disease:
Details: * On March 30, 2016, Vedanta Biosciences announced a license agreement with RIKEN, the University of Tokyo and Azabu University for technology developed by RIKEN Team Leader and Vedanta Co-founder and Scientific Advisory Board Member, Kenya Honda, M.D., Ph.D. The new technology has potential clinical applications in infectious disease, vaccine design and immuno-oncology. Vedanta also received a second patent issuance in Japan for key intellectual property.
Under the terms of the agreement, Vedanta will collaborate with Dr. Honda’s lab to investigate potential pharmaceutical candidates involving bacterial strains that activate immune cells in the human gut called Th17 cells. Th17 cells are a specialized group of immune cells that may help protect the body against infectious pathogens and are also a potential target in the treatment of cancer.
Financial terms:
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