Curie-Cancer and Servier renew partnership into ‘triple negative’ breast cancers

French privately-held drugmaker Servier has renewed its partnership with Curie-Cancer, the body which leads the Institut Curie's industry partner research activity, to identify therapeutic targets for treating ‘triple negative’ breast cancers for a further three years.

‘Triple negative’ breast cancers account for around 15% per cent of breast cancer cases – they are particularly aggressive and can be unresponsive to the current chemotherapy regimens. Triple negative breast cancers do not express estrogen or progesterone receptors (in which case they could be treated with hormone therapy), or Her-2 receptors (which would allow for targeted therapies that bind to Her-2 receptors). The partners will share the intellectual property resulting from this work.

Encouraging initial results

In 2005 the Institut Curie and Servier decided to pool their expertise to identify potential therapeutic targets specific to triple negative breast cancers, using the Institut Curie's extensive collection of breast cancer samples. The goal of the initial partnership was to identify molecules that act on these targets, in order to develop medicinal products to improve treatment for patients who do not respond to the current therapies available. They have discovered a number of leads, identifying a therapeutic target, kinase TTK/MPS1, an enzyme involved in cell cycle regulation. A medicinal product that acts on this target is already in preclinical development.