Champions Biotechnology Announces Technology Collaboration With Cephalon

Champions Biotechnology, Inc. recently announced the signing of a technology collaboration agreement with Cephalon, Inc. in which Champions will conduct low passage Tumorgraft studies on two proprietary chemical compounds, CEP-32496, an inhibitor of mutant B-Raf, and CEP-37440, a selective dual ALK-FAK inhibitor, provided by Cephalon to determine the activity or response in potential clinical indications. The results of these studies will be used to inform the future clinical development path of these compounds.

Cephalon will pay Champions an initiation fee of $1.39 million and will, under certain conditions, also pay Champions various amounts upon achieving certain milestones. Potential milestone payments under the agreement total $27 million. In addition, under certain conditions, Cephalon will pay Champions royalties on any commercialized products developed under the agreement.

“This is our largest Translational Oncology Services contract to date and provides us with a great foundation for strong revenue growth for our next fiscal year,” said Guy Malchi, Champion’s Head of Corporate Development. “We are very excited to be partnering with an innovative company like Cephalon that can utilize our technology to improve the process of oncology drug development. The potential for future milestone and royalty payments in these contracts will allow us to capture a portion of the financial upside our technology generates for our customers. We hope this is just the beginning of a productive and long-term partnership between our companies.”

“Our collaboration with Champions Biotechnology significantly complements our oncology discovery capabilities by providing wider access to more clinically relevant and predictive preclinical oncology models,” added Jeffry Vaught, Cephalon’s Executive Vice President for R&D. In addition, Champions’ technology platform will enable us to more effectively select the subsets of specific human cancers most likely to respond to our novel targeted therapeutic agents and identify the underlying cancer genotypes associated with drug sensitivity and resistance to chemotherapeutics.”

Champions Biotechnology, Inc. is engaged in the development of advanced technology solutions and services to personalize the development and use of oncology drugs. The company’s Tumorgraft Technology Platform is a novel approach to personalizing cancer care based upon the implantation of human tumors in immune-deficient mice followed by propagation of the resulting engraftments, or Tumorgrafts, in a manner that preserves the biological characteristics of the original human tumor.

The company believes these Tumorgrafts closely reflect human cancer biology, and their response to drugs is predictive of clinical outcomes in cancer patients. The company offers personalized Tumorgraft development, drug studies, and genome sequencing as part of its POS whereby physicians can evaluate the effects of cancer drugs on their patients’ Tumorgrafts and understand the genetic make-up of their patient’s tumor, enabling them to better select treatment regimens that may be efficacious to the patient.

The company’s Tumorgraft Technology Platform is also used to provide Translational Oncology Solutions, or TOS, (previously referred to as Preclinical eValuation services) to leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers. This technology can evaluate tumor sensitivity/resistance to various single, combination standard, and novel chemotherapy agents and could lead to a faster and less-expensive path for drug development. TOS also includes biomarker discovery and the identification of novel drug combinations. In addition, the company provides to oncologists and their patients expert tumor panels to analyze medical records and test results, to assist in understanding conventional and experimental options and to identify and arrange for testing, analysis, and study of the patients’ cancer tissues, as appropriate.