KeyOn Communications Holdings, Inc. (fka KEYO)

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September 15, 2014 01:31 PM Eastern Daylight Time


CORRECTION...by NantBioScience


LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Eighth paragraph, attribution should read: Patrick Soon-Shiong, M.D., CEO of NantBioScience (instead of Patrick Soon-Shiong, M.D., CEO of NantOmics).


“We are excited to partner with NantBioScience to one day bring our basic research of Ral protein inhibitors to the bedside of patients in the form of a new cancer fighting treatment”

The corrected release reads:

NANTBIOSCIENCE AND UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO TO COLLABORATE ON DEVELOPMENT OF NOVEL PROTEIN CANCER FIGHTING DRUGS

Partnership will focus on the Ral protein, an unexplored therapeutic target found to play a role in the growth and spread of cancer

NantBioScience, a NantWorks company focused on the discovery and development of innovative treatments for diseases with high unmet medical need, announced today a research collaboration and an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with the University of Colorado for the development and commercialization of anti-cancer agents designed to target the Ral protein, a cell signaling protein implicated in the growth and spread of cancer. Through this partnership, NantBioScience will receive the exclusive right to develop and commercialize therapeutic and diagnostic products relating to the research activities.

NantBioScience’s broad development program includes novel agents that are designed to stop growth and spread of tumors by interfering with cancer communication pathways. Although the Ral protein has been found to play a role in the most commonly activated signaling pathways across cancer types, including colon, lung and pancreatic cancers, it has not yet been successfully targeted for potential therapeutic intervention. NantBioScience’s partnership with the University of Colorado and the Comprehensive Cancer Center is focused on the development of clinical compounds designed to block the function of the Ral protein.

“NantBioScience is committed to the discovery and development of cancer fighting therapies that target the key drivers and root causes of tumor growth and spread. Targeting the Ral protein expands our ongoing efforts to silence a key pathway, the RAS pathway, that has been found to be altered and constitutively activated in one out of three cancers,” said Shahrooz Rabizadeh, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer of NantBioScience. “We are pleased to be partnering with the University of Colorado, leaders in the science of inhibiting Ral function, to accelerate the development of novel cancer medicines for patients.”

Through structural and computational analysis, compounds that block the activity of Ral were identified by Dr. Dan Theodorescu and colleagues demonstrating the feasibility of developing potential treatments for this target. The results were published on September 14 in the journal Nature.

This pursuit of a clinical product targeting Ral is a collaborative effort, with teams from both the Univ. of Colorado and NantBioScience conducting research activities together.

“We are excited to partner with NantBioScience to one day bring our basic research of Ral protein inhibitors to the bedside of patients in the form of a new cancer fighting treatment,” said Dan Theodorescu, M.D., Ph.D., director of the University of Colorado Comprehensive Cancer Center.

NantBioScience’s portfolio includes clinical compounds designed to target changes at the molecular level based on the genomic and proteomic profile of the tumor, nano albumin-bound (nab®)-based molecules, novel remediators of p53 function, mutant K-Ras inhibitors, and potent multi-kinase inhibitors.

“This collaboration with Dr. Dan Theodorescu and the University of Colorado Comprehensive Cancer Center furthers our goal to catalyze personalized precision cancer care in our war against cancer," said Patrick Soon-Shiong, M.D., CEO of NantBioScience.

About NantBioScience

NantBioScience, a NantWorks company, is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery of medicines designed to target the root cause of cancer growth and spread. Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the creator of Abraxane® and the founder of the nano albumin-bound (nab®) technology platform, established NantBioScience in 2011. With a pipeline of nab®-based molecules and inhibitors of proteins that drive tumor growth, NantBioScience’s mission is to develop medicines designed to treat patients based on the unique molecular fingerprint of the tumor, not the tissue or organ from which the cancer originated. Patients entering clinical trials would be identified after comprehensive genomic and proteomic analysis and enrolled based on this molecular profile to maximize clinical outcome and minimize side effects. NantBioScience and NantWorks are uniquely positioned to develop molecularly designed drugs and identify patients and their tumor signature at the most granular levels with their suite of analytic tools and cloud based supercomputing capabilities. For more information please visit www.nantworks.com and follow Dr. Soon-Shiong on Twitter @solvehealthcare.


Contacts

NantWorks
Jen Hodson
562-397-3639
[e-mail]

http://www.nantworks.com/