As published in a press release by the company, June 29 2016, Sprint Bioscience AB (publ) has signed an agreement with the Center for Hematology and Regenerative Medicine (HERM) at the Karolinska Institute in which the parties will evaluate Sprint Bioscience drug candidates for the treatment of acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), one of the most common forms of blood cancer. The partnership enables, at an early stage, the identification of groups of patients, who may benefit from a future drug.
AML is a collective name for a group of blood cancers. The disease strongly inhibits the normal formation of blood which in turn leads to symptoms that are life-threatening if left untreated. About 18,300 new cases are diagnosed with AML each year in Europe. Dr. Julian Walfridsson and his research group at the Center for Hematology and Regenerative Medicine (HERM) at the Karolinska Institute in Huddinge are focused on trying to identify new therapeutic targets for combating AML. Julian and his team have developed a method to evaluate new therapies in patient derived AML samples.
“Together with Professor Sören Lehmann at Uppsala University we have developed a method for evaluating therapeutic targets in AML. We use cancer cells donated from patients diagnosed with the disease”, says Julian. “With our collaboration with Sprint Bioscience, I see a good potential to find new therapies for AML,” adds Julian.
The research collaboration between Sprint Bioscience and Julian’s research group aims to evaluate early drug candidates for efficacy in these samples. The results generated are of high clinical relevance as they come directly from the patients.
” With this partnership, we hope not only to get a deeper biological understanding of our projects, but also to provide a more complete package to our customers,” said Anders Åberg, CEO of Sprint Bioscience. “Tailor-made treatments are the future and here we can, at an early stage identify which patients are considered for treatment. This can remarkably reduce the cost for later clinical trials, something our customers value.”
The work will be conducted on HERM´s and Sprint Biosciences respective research laboratories at Novum in Huddinge, Sweden.
