Crown Bioscience expands partnership with National Resource Centre for Mutant Mice (NRCMM)

Published: 4-Feb-2015

To focus on developing immuno-oncology mouse models to support translational medical research


Crown Bioscience, a US-headquartered drug discovery and development service company, has extended its agreement with the National Resource Centre for Mutant Mice (NRCMM) and its commercial branch Nanjing Biotech Innovation Corporation (NBIC), in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China.

The partners will focus on the development of immune-oncology experimental cancer models, and others, including diabetes and inflammation diseases, to advance immune-oncology translational research and the treatment of cancers and other diseases.

Immune-oncology therapy is a new area of cancer research, particularly with the recent regulatory approval of the PD-1 antibody. But many scientific/medical questions remain, including why only subsets of patients respond to the treatments and what combination strategies can 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 of immunotherapy drugs are biologics specific to certain species, which means that traditional murine models are inadequate.

The partnership will initially build and validate novel experimental immune-oncology models for cancer immunotherapy research, by taking advantage of the proprietary technologies of both institutions.

Crown Bioscience is a leading 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 tumour models (MuPrime).

NRCMM specialises in genetically engineered mouse models (GEMM), with vast resources, including a large collection of GEMMs, many of which mimic human cancers.

Both partners have complementary expertise in disease models (oncology/diabetes, etc.) and GEMMs.

Their initial collaboration was announced in the first half of last year.

You may also like