PBS-Bio announces three new contracts to develop cancer therapy

Predictive Biomarker Sciences technology shows how drugs function along cellular pathways

In an industry that faces increasing challenges in delivering new drugs to patients, Predictive Biomarker Sciences (PBS-Bio) today announced three new contracts aimed at bringing new medicines to the marketplace.

PBS-Bio said it is helping more companies develop therapies against a variety of cancers. Most new cancer drugs fail in late-stage studies, and it can take as much as $1 billion and more than a decade to bring the drugs to market.

To jump-start drug development, PBS-Bio's analysis helps pharmaceutical companies better understand how their drugs work, and identifies biomarkers that can help predict which patients will respond to treatment.

PBS-Bio's three new pharmaceutical collaborators are:

• ENDECE, a Mequon, Wis., company that discovered and is developing a family of anti-cancer compounds, including their lead compound NDC-1308, which target molecular "bioswitches" that control metabolic pathways impacting cancer cell growth.
• Revalesio Corporation, a Tacoma, Wash., group developing novel therapeutic candidates containing "charged-stabilized nanostructures" to prevent inflammatory mediated diseases without inhibiting normal cellular functions.
• Unibioscreen, a Brussels, Belgium, firm that is developing a promising anti-cancer drug called UNBS1450 - currently in European clinical trials.

These three small pharmaceutical companies are in addition to four collaborations in progress between PBS-Bio and four large pharma groups, said Dr. Edward Smith, co-founder and CEO of PBS-Bio, which is a privately held, Mesa-based for-profit corporation.

"We feel that we have reached critical momentum for the growth of PBS-Bio," said Dr. Smith. "The pharmaceutical industry is failing in their efforts to bring new cancer drugs to patients with only two drugs approved in 2009, and only two so far this year. The problems are empty pipelines, and outdated methods of drug discovery and development. Pharmaceutical companies are now seeing the value of the PBS-Bio dynamic technology to help bring more new cancer drugs to market faster and cheaper."

In each case, connections to PBS-Bio were made through scientific networks involving the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), a Phoenix-based biomedical research facility.

And in each case, PBS-Bio is providing drug companies with unique real-time looks at how new therapeutics actually work over time within cellular pathways - the so-called mechanisms of action.