AstraZeneca and Isis Pharmaceuticals form strategic alliance on cancer therapeutics

AstraZeneca and Isis Pharmaceuticals announced a strategic alliance yesterday for antisense therapeutics against five cancer targets. The alliance includes a license to develop and commercialise ISIS-STAT3Rx, which is currently being evaluated by Isis in an early clinical trial in patients with advanced lymphomas.

The alliance intends to apply AstraZeneca’s experience in personalised medicine development to enhance the development process for four research programmes in the oncology area.

“Isis’ antisense technology platform allows AstraZeneca to broaden our oncology research efforts beyond traditional drug discovery methods, while at the same time becoming more specific about how we target cancer. AstraZeneca’s expertise in oncology translational science and our global capabilities in development and commercialisation of oncology products and Isis’ innovative approach to discovering novel medicines reflect a common goal of bringing new medicines to cancer patients.”

Susan Galbraith, Head of the AstraZeneca Oncology Innovative Medicines Unit said: “We are excited to collaborate with AstraZeneca, a global leader in oncology, to apply our technology and drug discovery expertise to developing novel anti-cancer agents. We will benefit from AstraZeneca’s extensive oncology expertise in the use of novel pre-clinical animal models to validate targets and develop predictive assays to identify which patients would benefit the most from these new targets.”