BerGenBio receives grant to study novel therapeutics for inhibiting epithelial-mesenchymal transition

NOK 13 million funding secured from the Research Council of Norway

BerGenBio AS ("BerGenBio" or the "Company"), an oncology biopharmaceutical company, is pleased to announce the award of a NOK 13 million grant from the Research Council of Norway's User-driven Research based Innovation programme (BIA) to help fund research into novel therapeutics for inhibiting tumor epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), a key driver of metastasis (cancer spread) and a mechanism of drug-resistance.

The focus of the project, titled: "Novel therapeutics inhibiting the EMT/Axl pathway in aggressive cancers", is to implement state-of-the-art R&D strategies to identify and develop new drug candidates with the potential to prevent and reverse acquired cancer drug resistance. There is a significant unmet medical need for new treatments that prevent drug resistance. It is estimated that one in three people die of cancer, 90% of which from tumors that have spread and become resistant to treatment. A number of studies have shown that the Axl receptor kinase is closely linked to drug resistance and drugs that inhibit it could offer a promising potential new treatment option.

Research by BerGenBio in the development of BGB324, the Company's first-in-class selective Axl kinase inhibitor, has firmly established the concept that inhibition of the Axl/EMT pathway is effective against acquired drug resistant and aggressive cancers and has also identified new approaches to inhibiting EMT. The development of a second generation of Axl-pathway targeting therapeutics has the potential to lead to more effective drugs in an era of increasingly personalized medicine. The BIA funding will be used to support development of these new concepts into new, highly innovative drug leads with early preclinical proof-of-concept.