Isis Pharmaceuticals Inc. announced Friday that it has receivedexclusive worldwide rights to develop and marketoligonucleotide therapeutics targeted at a multidrug resistanceprotein (MRP) discovered by researchers at Queen's Universityin Kingston, Ontario.

Isis of Carlsbad, Calif., and the university investigators haveinitiated a multiyear collaborative research program todiscover therapeutic compounds to circumvent the resistanceof cancers to chemotherapy drugs.

For instance, production of MRP is thought to be responsible forthe resistance of small cell lung cancers to chemotherapy, asituation that occurs in the vast majority of patients with thisdeadly disease. The two-year survival rate for small-cell lungcancer patients who have received chemotherapy is only about10 percent because of this relapse to drug resistance.

The presence of MRP is also thought to be responsible for thedrug resistance of non-small cell lung cancers, and has been"implicated in other cancers as well," according to JacquelineSiegel, Isis' chief financial officer.

The university group, led by Susan Cole and Roger Deeley, hasisolated and characterized the MRP gene (as they reported lastDecember in Science), and have also filed a patent on the genesequence and related discoveries. They are currently involvedin gene-transfer experiments to demonstrate the causalrelationship between the presence of the multidrug resistanceprotein and resistance to chemotherapy.

Isis plans to use its antisense technology to develop drugs toblock the synthesis of MRP and its oligonucleotidecombinatorial strategy to develop drugs that interfere withMRP function.

-- Jennifer Van Brunt Senior Editor

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