Washington Editor
Just weeks after closing a private financing round, OncoMethylome Sciences SA has struck a deal with Schering-Plough Corp., whereby the latter will use the former's technology in an effort to maximize drug treatment.
"This is the first deal that we've done on what we call the personalized medicine side [of our business]," Harry Schrickx, OncoMethylome's vice president of business development and marketing, told BioWorld Today. "With the potential for pharmacogenomics, this is strategically and in practice very important."
He also noted the validating effect of such a relationship for the Durham, N.C.-based company, calling it "a hands-on and exciting" affiliation. In the agreement, privately held OncoMethylome is licensing assay technology that measures the methylation status of the MGMT gene in glioblastoma multiforme patients who are being treated with Schering-Plough's Temodar (temozolomide). Under the collaboration, the marker's DNA methylation status is being evaluated in patients' tumors for its potential role in optimizing Temodar therapy in that malignant brain cancer.
According to Philip Devine, OncoMethylome's chief financial officer, a deal such as that is a validation for the company's investors who already have been drawn to its existing diagnostics business and resulting early revenues. Its business model includes defining a panel of methylation markers to help partners do efficient clinical trials and defining panels that optimize treatment for certain patients. The Schering-Plough agreement generates considerable, although undisclosed, payments in the first year, on top of its longer-term potential.
OncoMethylome just closed a 15 million (US$18.1 million) Series B financing round led by Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners. That Paris-based venture capital group's investment in OncoMethylome represents its first outlay from a new fund that Devine called the largest specialized biotech fund in France. To date, OncoMethylome has raised about 29.2 million from a syndicate of European investors, with all prior backers involved in the second round in addition to Rothschild. (See BioWorld Today, Nov. 3, 2005.)
Devine said the recent funding would carry the company to the point that it breaks even, merges its operations with another firm or goes for a public listing, while Schrickx noted that in the meantime the new money would be used to accelerate programs in the company's early cancer detection business and for its tumor-specific therapy operations.
MGMT was discovered by OncoMethylome's collaborators at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and subsequent publications have demonstrated variable response rates among brain cancer patients depending on the methylation status of the gene. It is thought that down-regulating the MGMT gene might predict brain tumor response to treatment with alkylating agents like Temodar, which generated $152 million in sales during Schering-Plough's most recent fiscal quarter.
"It's not the intention to identify markers," Schrickx said, noting that MGMT's role already is identified. "The goal is to see if they can optimize the treatment with an existing drug that is on the market."
In exchange for the nonexclusive license, OncoMethylome, which has European research facilities in Belgium and the Netherlands, is receiving an up-front license payment, milestone payments and sample processing fees for testing services.
The worldwide license initially will focus in the brain cancer setting alone, but might be expanded down the road to other types of cancers in which Temodar exhibits activity, and potentially other Schering-Plough products.
More specific financial terms were not disclosed, although the Kenilworth, N.J.-based pharmaceutical firm will support clinical trials that will be conducted by a pair of cancer research groups, the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group and the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer.
OncoMethylome already is involved in diagnostic deals for early cancer detection, including a prostate cancer relationship with Veridex LLC, a unit of New Brunswick, N.J.-based Johnson & Johnson, and a colon cancer agreement with Exact Sciences Corp., of Marlborough, Mass. More of those diagnostic deals are to come, Schrickx added, as are agreements on genes and related therapies.