HONG KONG – China's government-founded Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health (GIBH) has partnered with a U.S. biotech company to co-develop its cancer candidate.

GIBH and St. Louis-based Euclises Pharmaceuticals Inc. announced their agreement to accelerate the development of both Euclises' and GIBH's cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitors for the treatment of cancer. Under the terms of the agreement, Euclises will add COX-2 inhibitors (coxibs) discovered by GIBH, including the advanced preclinical candidate GIBH-1014, to the company's Euclicoxib pipeline.

"GIBH discovery scientists have created an exciting new class of coxib drug candidates that complement those in Euclises' own portfolio," said Rajesh Devraj, CEO of Euclises.

GIBH and Euclises also will collaborate on the further development of the candidates from the Euclicoxib pipeline, particularly for the treatment of cancers driven by COX-2 and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2).

"Euclises has a promising pipeline and a strong team with both the COX-2 and the oncology experience necessary to succeed," said Duanqing Pei, director general of GIBH. "We are thrilled to be working with them to advance our combined portfolio of coxib candidates."

The two parties will jointly select one or more clinical candidates. Euclises will be responsible for global clinical development in cancer and GIBH will be responsible for developing the drug for pain and inflammation indications in China.

GIBH-1014 is a new class of COX-2 selective inhibitor (CSI). According to GIBH's 2014 Drug Discovery Pipeline Report, about 53 million surgeries are performed in the U.S. each year and more than half of patients still experience inadequate pain relief after the operations. The postoperative pain market is growing steadily and is expected to exceed $6.5 billion in the U.S., EU and Japan by 2018.

"These are two of the top groups working in an area with tremendous therapeutic benefit still to be tapped," said John Talley, chief scientific officer of Euclises. "The collaboration between Euclises and GIBH builds on groundbreaking science, implicating an important role for COX-2 and PGE2 in the tumor microenvironment beyond their role in promoting resistance to standard-of-care cancer therapies."

GIBH was jointly founded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the People's Government of Guangdong Province and the People's Government of Guangzhou Municipality. The State Commission Office for Public Sector Reform approved the establishment of the institutes in March 2006.

GIBH has more than 300 staff members working at three unincorporated research units: the South China Institute of Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine, the Institute of Chemical Biology and the Center for Infection & Immunity.

The institutes aim at innovative research on traditional Chinese medicine, vaccines and diagnostics, as well as improving the production and industrialization of biopharmaceuticals. The institutes operate with three main focal points: chemical biology, stem cell and regenerative medicine, and infection and immunology.

GIBH has become an important domestic R&D base for biomedicine in southern China. Since 2013, it has obtained permission to conduct more than 300 research projects worth a total of ¥600 million (US$98 million), which have resulted in 205 patents and 327 articles published in Science.

The Division of Drug Discovery was created to translate GIBH's ideas into successful drug production. The Drug Discovery Pipeline program was launched in 2009 to translate GIBH's scientific findings into drug discovery projects.

"After its formation, GIBH now has the required expertise, core technologies, structure and integration of disciplines to enable effective drug discovery research," said Micky Tortorella, chief technology officer of GIBH, in his drug discovery research report. "This model is unique to GIBH and not found at other institutes within the Chinese Academy of Sciences."

GIBH has seven major candidate compounds, including two out-licensed projects: D824, a second-generation Bcr-Abl kinase inhibitor for the treatment of resistant forms of chronic myelogenous leukemia, and Alzheimer's disease drug GIBH-130.

Other compounds include the mentioned GIBH-1014; GIBH-117, an aspartic protease inhibitor as anti-malarial agent; R001/2, an intra-articular disease-modifying osteoarthritis drug; ADAMTS13 for the treatment of microvascular thrombosis; 7rh, a new class of DDR1 selective inhibitors for the treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer.

To enhance its drug discovery ability, GIBH has established international partnerships with institutions such as Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica and the Center for World Health & Medicine at St. Louis University, to co-develop drugs. Between 2005 and 2013, it launched more than 20 international collaborative projects.

"Our international partners offer experience and innovation in drug discovery," Tortorella said. "These collaborations allow GIBH to share the risk and expenses associated with drug development."