SEngine Precision Medicine & Oncodesign Announce Collaboration Agreement for the Discovery of New Personalized Cancer Treatment for Aggressive & Untreatable Tumors

SEngine Precision Medicine Inc. and Oncodesign recently announced the signature of a research collaboration agreement for R&D of a new personalized cancer treatment for aggressive and untreatable tumors.

SEngine is commercializing the PARIS Test, a leading-edge diagnostic tool that pre-screens a broad panel of marketed cancer drugs on live patient-derived tumor cells. The results are analyzed using proprietary algorithms, culminating in a clinically actionable drug sensitivity report provided to oncologists for patients whose cancer has no remaining actionable treatment protocols. Dramatic results on the test’s predictive value have been reported for a number of terminally ill cancer patients.

Oncodesign has developed Nanocyclix, a medicinal chemistry platform for generating highly potent and selective small macrocyclic kinase inhibitors. Using a probe-based drug discovery paradigm aimed to find highly effective inhibitors for intractable kinases, Oncodesign has built an extensive set of high potential compound probes that are highly novel. Since its inception, Oncodesign has advanced a two of these compounds to near clinical stage.

Testing of a subset of potent and selective Nanocyclix probes against an undisclosed target proposed by SEngine has shown significant selective cancer cell killing effects on a broad range of patient-derived live 3D-tumor cell systems (organoids) for multiple cancer types that are highly aggressive and without currently existing treatment options. This observation confirms the potential use of the Nanocyclix probes in SEngine’s precision oncology platform to transform future cancer treatments.

SEngine and Oncodesign have initiated a joint research collaboration to evaluate the feasibility to convert the already identified Nanocyclix inhibitor series into drug candidates that are likely to be effective in the clinic. During this initial phase, both companies will combine their respective technology platforms to advance the program. SEngine will provide research funding to Oncodesign for the initial optimization of the compound series up to a predefined level. It is anticipated that this initial phase will be followed by a larger research collaboration with an option to license at a more advanced stage.

Carla Grandori, MD, PhD, CEO, and Co-founder of SEngine, said “I am thrilled to expand our collaboration with Oncodesign, now that their candidate kinase inhibitors have shown efficacy against a panel of patient-derived organoids for specific solid tumors. It is a new era for drug development, where drugs are pre-tested on mini-cancers grown in 3D shortly after ex vivo derivation, a significant improvement over the historical use of established cell-line models. SEngine’s PARIS Test is highly predictive of in vivo drug response and allows us to bring novel therapeutics towards clinical evaluation with higher chances of success.”

Philippe Genne, CEO and Founder of Oncodesign, added “This collaboration with SEngine goes right to the heart of our company’s mission: finding novel treatments for cancer patients that have no remaining solutions. We already are working on target identification with Oncosnipe and our IA Business Unit and partnering with SEngine widens our horizon as the combination of Nanocyclix and the PARIS Test, two important technologies for personalized cancer treatment discovery, opens the door for a highly innovative way of discovering effective new cancer treatments, starting from biological material directly derived from patients.”

Jan Hoflack, CSO of Oncodesign, also added “The results already obtained with our Nanocyclix probes in patient derived live cellular cancer organoids has generated high enthusiasm at both Oncodesign and SEngine. Combining our forces has the potential to dramatically change lives of patients with advanced, metastatic and uncurable cancers of multiple types and origin. Our teams have already started working to come to clinical candidate molecules.”

The PARIS Test is a next generation diagnostic test that predicts drug responses by pre-screening a broad panel of cancer drugs in patient-derived live tumor cells using robotics and AI-driven computational tools. SEngine’s CLIA certified PARIS Test generates actionable drug sensitivity reports for patients and is applicable to all solid tumors including colon, breast, lung, ovarian and pancreatic cancer. Cancer derived cells grown in 3D outside the body maintain the functionality of the original tumor as well as its genomic characteristics. For cancers where a treatment path is not clear, such as many metastatic and recurrent cancers, the PARIS Test provides crucial information to treating physicians to match the right drug to the right patient.

SEngine Precision Medicine Inc. is a precision oncology company revolutionizing cancer therapies by pre-testing drugs on patient-derived 3D cultures utilizing patient specific tumor cells. As a spin-out from the world-renowned Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, SEngine is leveraging over two decades of R&D in diagnostics and drug discovery. The company is commercializing the PARIS Test, a next generation diagnostic test that predicts drug responses integrating knowledge of cancer genomics with phenotypic testing of patient-derived live cells combined with robotics and AI-driven computational tools. SEngine’s CLIA certified PARIS Test generates actionable drug sensitivity reports for patients with solid tumors. SEngine is also pursuing drug discovery via strategic collaborations with biopharmaceutical/pharmaceutical companies by deploying its precision oncology platform.

Oncodesign is a biopharmaceutical company specializing in precision medicine, founded in 1995 by its current CEO and majority shareholder. It has been listed on the Euronext Growth Market since April 2014. Its mission is to discover effective therapies to fight cancer and other diseases without a therapeutic solution. With its unique experience, enriched thanks to over 1,000 customers – including the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies – and based on a one-of-a-kind technological platform combining artificial intelligence, medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, regulatory bioanalysis and cutting-edge medical imaging, Oncodesign is able to select new therapeutic targets, then design and develop potential preclinical candidates up to the clinical phase stage. Oncodesign has configured its organization to offer innovative services to its customers and licenses for its proprietary molecules. When applied to kinase inhibitors – molecules that represent a market estimated to be worth more than $65 billion by 2027 and nearly 25% of R&D investments in the pharmaceutical industry – Oncodesign’s technology has already made it possible to target several molecules of interest with a high therapeutic potential, both in and outside of oncology, and has signed partnerships with international pharmaceutical groups. Based in Dijon, France, at the heart of the University Hospital complex as well as the Paris-Saclay complex, Oncodesign boasts 230 employees across three Business Units (BU) – Service, Biotech, and Artificial Intelligence – and has subsidiaries in Canada and the US.