Crown Bioscience Announces a Key Expansion of its Partnership with The National Resource Center for Mutant Mice (NRCMM) on Developing Novel Immuno-oncology Mouse Models

Crown Bioscience, Inc., a leading global drug discovery and development service company with its R&D centers across the globe has announced that a new partnership agreement has been reached with the National Resource Center for Mutant Mice (NRCMM) and its commercial branch Nanjing Biotech Innovation Corporation (NBIC), in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China. The newly expanded strategic partnership will focus on the development of new immune-oncology experimental cancer models, along with other models, including diabetes and inflammation diseases, to advance immune-oncology translational research and the treatment of cancers and other diseases.

Immune-oncology therapy has recently become an area of intense cancer pharmaceutical research, particularly with the recent regulatory approval of PD-1 antibody for the treatment of cancer. However, there are many scientific/medical questions remaining to be answered, including why only subsets of patients respond to the treatments and what combination strategies can significantly enhance the current clinical benefits. Relevant experimental models can help to answer these questions. However, there are few such useful cancer models, with full immuno-competency, that can be used for assessing immunotherapy. In particular, many of the new generation immunotherapy drugs are biologics with species-specificity, which thus render traditional murine models inadequate.

The immediate focus of the newly expanded partnership will be to build and validate novel experimental immune-oncology models for cancer immunotherapy research, by leveraging the proprietary technologies of both institutions

Crown Bioscience is the premier service provider of translational oncology and metabolic diseases research platforms, providing many unique disease models. It has one of the largest and most advanced translational oncology platforms featuring fully annotated collections of proprietary patient derived xenograft (PDX, HuPrime®) models (>1,300) and numerous primary mouse tumor models (MuPrime®). NRCMM is a leading research organization specializing in genetically engineered mouse models (GEMM), with vast resources, including a large collection of GEMMs, many of which mimic human cancers. Both parties have complementary expertise and experience in disease models (oncology/diabetes, etc.) and GEMMs. Both organizations announced a research collaboration during the first half of 2014, and have now decided to further expand this partnership and focus on the development of immune-oncology experimental models. The expanded partnership is expected to significantly enhance the research capabilities of both organizations in immune-oncology and will thus benefit the global research community fighting cancer.

After the signing of the agreement, Dr. Jean-Pierre Wery, Crown’s President, commented: “Crown plays a leading role in providing cutting-edge translational platforms and cost effective drug development solutions for almost all the top pharmaceutical companies worldwide. Crown is also determined to play a key role in helping to develop immune-oncology therapies and is very happy to expand the partnership with NRCMM to offer the world new experimental solutions to immune-oncology problems. This collaboration will further strengthen Crown’s leading position as the oncology translational medicine partner for drug discovery organizations worldwide.”

Dr. Jay Liu, Deputy Director of NRCMM and CEO of NBIC, also commented: “As the leading research institute focusing on genetically engineered mice in China, NRCMM takes pride in its capability of creating innovative mouse models for the biomedical community and facilitating the development of new therapeutics. Working together with a world leading translational oncology service provider, such as Crown, the combined expertise of Crown in oncology and our GEMM can certainly offer great GEMM-based oncology platforms to our partners in China and around the world. We are certainly excited about this opportunity.”