Eisai unit links with Polish biotech for novel anticancer agent discovery

Japanese drug major Eisai (TYO: 4523) says that its US research subsidiary H3 Biomedicine has entered into a collaborative agreement with Poland-based biotech firm Selvita (PL: SLV), one of the largest drug discovery companies in Eastern Europe, to create novel anticancer agents.

Under the collaboration, both companies will seek to create novel anticancer agents through identification and validation of several kinases as therapeutic targets for cancers with specific genetic characteristics. Financial terms of the accord were not disclosed.

Recent advances in human cancer genomics have revealed promising drug creation targets that are leading to novel concepts in cancer treatment. H3 Biomedicine seeks to identify genes that are the root causes of cancer and to develop medicines that demonstrate high efficacy in treating specific cancers that possess those genetic features. H3 Biomedicine maintains a set of unique tools and research engines in bioinformatics, which analyzes the immense amount of data collected in cancer genomics, and target validation, which seeks to define new drug targets.