PCI Biotech works with Astra Zeneca
PCI Biotech reveals they have been collaborating with Astra Zeneca since 2015.
Our member PCI Biotech grabbed the opportunity during their third quarter report this week to announce who their mystery collaboration partner since 2015 has been. The “top-ten pharma company in the world”, who has been helping them, is Astra Zeneca.
PCI Biotech is a company that is based on a technology called photochemical internalisation, which was invented by Professor Kristian Berg from the Norwegian Radium Hospital. The technology is a kind of drug and gene delivery method. It aims to improve the release of big molecules and chemotherapy drugs to the targeted cancer cells. The technology can also potentially be used for a wide variety of diseases and treatments.
The company currently develops three different programs:
- FimaCHEM: enhancing the effect of chemotherapy drugs for localised treatment of cancer
- FimaVACC: delivering cancer vaccines effectively to the cancer cell and kick-starting a immune response
- fimaNAc: delivering nucleid acid therapeutics
You can read more about the revolutionary light technology in the following article:
Astra Zeneca has said that the results from their tests of fimaNAc look very promising in the oncology area. Now, they wish to see if the same technology can work in other disease areas. The pre-clinical collaboration agreement between PCI Biotech and Astra Zeneca lasts until the end of 2019 and the following 6 months will be used to evaluate the potential for further collaboration.
Per Walday, CEO of PCI Biotech, had the following to say about the collaboration:
“Ensuring sufficient intracellular delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics is a major hurdle to realise the vast therapeutic potential of this drug class. We believe that the fimaNAc technology can play an important part in solving this delivery challenge. PCI Biotech’s current collaborations and their progress suggest that external partners share this view.”
Listen to Per Walday and Ronny Skuggedal talk more about PCI Biotech, the “light technology”, their third quarter report and future milestones in the podcast Radium episode 103.
