Syros Pharma in-licenses clinical-stage RARα agonist from TMRC

US privately-held industry pioneer in gene control Syros Pharmaceuticals has entered into an exclusive license agreement with the Japanese oncology company TMRC Co, to develop and commercialize tamibarotene in North America and Europe for cancer. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Tamibarotene is a first-in-class selective agonist to retinoic acid receptor alpha (RARα), a nuclear hormone receptor which regulates transcription. Using Syros’ proprietary gene control discovery and development platform, the company discovered a cancer dependency to RARα and a biomarker to identify patients with this dependency who may respond to RARα agonist therapy. Syros plans to initiate a Phase II clinical trial with tamibarotene in the first half of 2016 in this genomically-defined subset of patients with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS).

Tamibarotene currently marketed as APL treatment in Japan