UK and Australian cancer groups in licensing accord

Cancer Research Technology (CRT), the commercial arm of Cancer Research UK, is entering into two licences with Cancer Therapeutics CRC (CTx), an Australian cancer drug and development company, to commercialize CTx’s preclinical focal adhesion kinase (FAK) inhibitor programs.

CRT, as global commercial partner of CTx, has exercised its options to take forward these two programs, which were developed by CTx, to in vivo proof-of-concept stage in mice. No financial terms of the accord were disclosed.

The FAK inhibitor portfolio includes CTx-0294945, a highly-selective small molecule inhibitor, and CTx-0294886, a potent small molecule inhibitor of three proteins: FAK; vascular growth factor receptor 3 (VEGFR3); and FMS-like tyrosine kinase 3 (FLT3).