Feb-2019
CCAB announces creation of new brain cancer therapeutic company, Empirica Therapeutics, as part of its strategy to advance new early-stage life sciences companies
The Centre for the Commercialization of Antibodies and Biologics (CCAB) announced a license agreement with Empirica Therapeutics Inc. aimed at developing new treatments for one of the deadliest forms of brain cancer, glioblastoma.
Glioblastoma (GBM) is an aggressive brain cancer that, even with the best current standard of care – which includes surgery, radiation treatment and chemotherapy – has a median survivorship of only 14 months. “Glioblastoma is an unforgiving disease because it always comes back,” said Dr. Sheila Singh, co-founder and CEO of Empirica Therapeutics. “We need to look at new ways of helping these patients because current therapies are failing them.”
Empirica Therapeutics will lead the clinical development of novel therapeutics for GBM. The new company was formed in a partnership between CCAB and collaborators at McMaster University and the University of Toronto. Empirica Therapeutics’ lead candidate targets CD133 that is highly expressed in certain GBM cells and can potentially lead to GBM recurrence. Empirica has developed a novel CD133 immunotherapy based on the CAR-T modality that has shown promising results in pre-clinical models of GBM. This is the first product in Empirica’s pre-clinical pipeline. The company is looking to identify additional targets that can broaden applications in brain tumours and other cancers.
Dr. Singh is a professor of surgery and biochemistry at McMaster University in Hamilton and the former division head of neurosurgery at Hamilton Health Sciences. She holds a Senior Canada Research Chair in Human Brain Cancer Stem Cell Biology.
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