Celleron licenses AZ's HDAC blocker

Celleron Therapeutics has secured exclusive rights to Anglo-Swedish drug major AstraZeneca's lead histone deacetylase inhibitor (AZD 9468), for  global development in conjunction with its proprietary CancerNav  predictive biomarker platform, which identifies tumors that are most  likely to respond to an individual cancer drug.

Celleron will lead the cancer trial program and plans to use CancerNav  to identify tumors that undergo a favorable response to the drug,  potentially allowing for much more rapid development and market entry.  Full rights to CXD101 pass to Celleron, including the right to  sublicense. In return, AstraZeneca will receive milestones and  royalties and may also re-aquire the compound at a later date. Further  financial terms were not disclosed.

HDACs control a wide variety of mechanisms involved with tumor cell  growth and division, and HDAC blockers represent a new class of cancer  drugs. However, because HDACs are ubiquitously expressed, their clinical  utility has been difficult to determine.