San Diego’s MEI Pharma (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MEIP]]) has agreed to pay $2.9 million upfront to Seattle-based Presage Biosciences for exclusive worldwide rights for the anti-cancer drug candidate voruciclib, which has shown some promise in a small, early stage study of patients with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL). Additional payments could eventually add another $181 million if MEI can meet developmental, regulatory, and commercial milestones.
In a statement late Tuesday, MEI Pharma describes voruciclib as a selective cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) inhibitor, a class of drugs used to treat certain cancers by preventing cancer cells from proliferating. In many cancers, CDKs spur cancer cells to over-proliferate, or CDK-inhibiting proteins are not functional.
According to MEI Pharma, voruciclib selectively blocks the activity of CDK9 and suppresses the protein MCL1, which can act to help cancer cells survive and even to resist certain anti-cancer drugs.
The FDA has approved two CDK inhibitors, palbociclib (Ibrance) and ribociclib (Kisqali), which are used to treat certain types of breast cancer. The agency recently granted priority review of a third drug, abemaciclib.
In the statement, Presage chairman David Johnson says the deal with MEI “enables us to focus our attention on identifying and advancing additional drug candidates.”
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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