Kinaxo awarded Bavarian grant for pancreatic cancer research

Grant

Kinaxo Biotechnologies GmbH has been awarded a grant by the Bavarian Research Foundation (Bayerische Forschungsstiftung) to expand applications of its quantitative phosphoproteomics platform to a drug efficacy study.

The technique involves the analysis of all phosphorylation events occurring in a specific cell line or tissue. Since the majority small-molecule anticancer drugs influence the cell’s signal transduction pathways, quantification of downstream phosphorylation patterns provides insights into a compound’s cellular mode of action. It can also uncover reasons for drug resistance and be used to pick out biomarkers that will show if a patient will respond to a particular drug.

The grant will enable Kinaxo to develop new approaches to personalised therapy in pancreatic cancer. The company will work in collaboration with Priaxon AG, Genomatix Software GmbH, the Technical University Munich and the University Hospital Rechts der Isar to perform a large-scale drug efficiency study.

Despite the fact that several drugs show significant promise for the treatment of pancreatic cancer, so far there are no effective treatments. The disease has a mortality rate of 95 per cent, with only a small number of patients responding to standard therapies. The aim of the collaboration is to establish tools for identifying tumour-relevant signal transduction pathways and therapeutic targets. Kinaxo will use its technology to evaluate the efficacy of established and new compounds for pancreatic cancer treatment and to try to identify predictive biomarkers to inform the design and monitoring of personalised therapies.