Mestastop, a two-year-old cancer metastasis focused biotech start up based at Bangalore, India that have raised money from Mumbai Angels and owner of Curadev Pharma, have officially announced a collaboration with the South Korea based ImmunoBiome Inc, to develop novel metastasis animal models using ImmunoBiome’ s expertise in Immuno-oncology and state-of-the art infrastructure and Mestastop’ s proprietary cell lines.
ImmunoBiome Inc, a biotech start up is developing new category of therapies based on rationally identified human gut and food commensal microbes and their derivatives for cancer and other intractable immune diseases including neuroinflammation, autoimmune disorders, and organ transplant rejections
ImmunoBiome’ s founder and CEO, Dr. Sin-Hyeong Im , who is also a Professor at POSTECH, said, “ImmunoBiome’ s focus is therapies based on untapped potential of human gut and food commensals.
We intend to bring in rationally selected natural commensals as well as their derivatives which can be developed as active pharmaceutical ingredient for therapy of human cancers and immune disorders. Our strength is in defining the effector molecules of such commensals and their mechanisms of actions. This approach will reduce the vagueness associated with microbiome-based therapies and enhance their chances of regulatory approvals. As our lead immuno-oncology candidate IMB001 is about to progress to clinical stages , we are highly excited to collaborate with Mestastop on developing a novel, fast and reliable cancer metastasis assay platform from in vitro to preclinical development stages, which can enable a rapid new drug discovery research in this area. Together with Mestastop, using their proprietary cell lines and our animal models, we will provide specific analyses platform for early detection, prevention, and therapy of metastasis in various human cancers. Further, it can be utilized for generating unique microbiome-based interventions for prevention and therapy of human cancer metastasis which is the biggest cause of mortality in cancer patients”.
Dr. Arnab Roy Chowdhury, Founder of Mestastop, said, “Mestastop intends to disrupt the way metastasis biology research is done. We have successfully created a novel phenotypic assay platform for metastasis, consisting of a battery of assays and engineered cell lines. In the same line we are creating a cost-effective animal model that will be more robust and less time consuming than all current spontaneous metastasis models. Together with Immunobiome we will correlate in vitro and in vivo data to come up with one-of-a-kind solution for anti-metastasis drug discovery, that should revolutionize drug discovery for metastasis, which has been badly neglected till date”.
More about ImmunoBiome: ImmunoBiome is on a leading path in microbiome mediated therapies with world-class germ-free and antigen-free animal facilities, deep expertise in microbial screening platforms and access to cGMP manufacturing of living bacteria and their products. Their lead candidate IMB-001 targeted for human melanoma and colon cancer is ready to undergo phase I clinical trials in 2022. They have also generated a formidable pipeline with 10 domestic and 5 international patents. ImmunoBiome is based at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) campus (Pohang, South Korea), one of the premier Korean university with highly developed research infrastructure including 4th generation particle accelerator (PAL-XFEL), world-class vivarium and core flow cytometry and imaging facilities. This also provides a unique strength to ImmunoBiome to tap into highly skilled scientific human resources.
More about Mestastop: Mestastop Solutions aims to become “the metastasis specialists”, by creating a world class R&D focused on metastasis, leveraging the unique strengths of being in India. Mestastop have brought together a cross functional team and have created an advisory board with India’s top Medical oncologists Dr. D.C. Doval, Dr. Govind K Babu, Dr. A.K. Vaidya and Dr. Anurag Mehta. Mestastop have successfully created an in vitro platform consisting of fourteen functional cell-based assays, that phenotypically represent the summative metastasis process. They have also converted non-metastatic cells into their respective metastatic forms to understand the key differences between them, creating two baselines for each functional assay. Currently, Mestastop is working with patient samples to normalize the in vitro observation and elucidate the final platform. The provisional IP have been filed in September 2020.