Presage Biosciences Granted 5th US Patent for Arrayed Microinjection Platform


Presage Biosciences, an oncology company developing a radical new testing approach that incorporates human efficacy data much earlier in drug development and clinical trials, recently announced that the US PTO has issued US Patent No. 8,834,428, covering the company’s CIVO arrayed microinjection platform.

The patent includes method claims covering the evaluation of drug response directly in a tumor. The Presage technology can be used for the selection or exclusion of candidates and drug combinations in clinical trials or to identify patient populations for clinical trials. This is Presage’s 5th US patent, providing broad intellectual property protection for its proprietary CIVO technology.

“This patent provides further coverage for our innovative approach to incorporating crucial data on human efficacy at stages in the drug development process where obtaining human data is otherwise impossible,” said Nathan Caffo, President of Presage. “We believe that the best model for understanding cancer drug response is naturally the human body.”

CIVO technology is currently being used preclinically to identify effective drug combinations, and it also can enable the incorporation of toxicity-sparing comparative drug efficacy data from human patients at several key points in the clinical trial process, ranging from pre-Phase I through assessment of novel combinations with approved drugs.

Presage is conducting a first-in-human feasibility study in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, evaluating response to locally multiple microinjected drugs in lymphoma patients and evaluating the safety profile of CIVO microinjections. CIVO is also being employed in preclinical models including canine cancer patients and human xenograft tumors in mice to drive decisions on drug development programs.

Presage Biosciences is an oncology company pioneering the incorporation of human efficacy data much earlier in the drug development and clinical trial processes with its patented CIVO arrayed microinjection platform. The CIVO platform allows for simultaneous assessment of multiple drugs or drug combinations directly in a single solid tumor to assess efficacy, resistance, and drug synergies. Presage partners with oncology-focused pharmaceutical companies through strategic alliances to provide in vivo data to validate novel targets, promote drug candidates to the right indications, and discover effective drug combinations. Presage is also actively pursuing drug programs though in-licensing and is using CIVO to develop a portfolio of promising oncology therapies to advance to the clinic. Presage is privately held and based in Seattle. For more information, visit www.presagebio.com.