International Research Consortium Aims to Build a
Reproducible Single-cell Sequencing Workflow to Capture Tumor Drug
Persistence
Regulatory News:
Transgene (Euronext Paris: TNG), a biotech company that
designs and develops virus-based immunotherapeutics against cancer,
announces its participation in the launch of PERSIST-SEQ, a new
international consortium of academic and industrial leaders in the
field of cancer research.
This collaborative research program aims to provide the
cancer research community with a new gold standard workflow for
single-cell sequencing by developing and validating best practices
as well as generating and analysing high-quality data. The project
aims to empower the scientific community to unravel drug resistance
and develop smarter therapeutic strategies to better treat cancer
and prevent resistance. PERSIST-SEQ is a five-year public-private
partnership, funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI),
and led by the Oncode Institute and AstraZeneca.
Cancer takes 9.6 million lives each year, 90% of which result
from untreatable cancer relapse occurring after initially effective
treatment. Therapeutic resistance is one of the primary causes of
cancer death and is clinically difficult to predict, prevent or
treat. Although resistance has been studied extensively in the last
decades, there is no comprehensive understanding of its underlying
mechanisms, nor how they differ between cancer types or therapies.
A better understanding of these mechanisms can contribute to better
patient stratification, the development of effective drug
strategies targeting the resistance mechanisms as well as improved
cancer treatment strategies. Moreover, resistance is a major
industrial challenge since it causes failure in the drug discovery
and development process. Therapeutic resistance is largely
unpredictable and difficult to model. Therefore, better tools are
needed to identify or predict resistance mechanisms. These tools
would, in turn, decrease the costs and risks associated with cancer
drug development significantly.
“Drug resistance in cancer is one of the greatest causes of
mortality and despite increasing success with targeted therapies in
the clinic, how cancer cells survive drug treatment is still not
well understood. We are excited to co-lead this European
industry-academic partnership, using state-of-the-art single-cell
sequencing to characterise 5 million single cells over 5 years to
understand and overcome drug resistance” said Ultan McDermott
(AstraZeneca), industrial co-lead of PERSIST-SEQ.
Current experimental approaches fail to study residual disease,
the major cause of cancer relapse, and therapeutic resistance in
clinically meaningful ways. In the last years novel methods in
single-cell sequencing have seen significant advancements. Such
techniques combined with advanced cancer modelling approaches can
shed light on the intricate processes underlying therapeutic
resistance and residual disease. Understanding the mechanisms of
cancer resistance is crucial to enable its mitigation and requires
a coordinated effort. To address these challenges, PERSIST-SEQ has
formed a coalition of field-leading researchers and medical
oncologists on cancer resistance who will leverage their ingenious
cancer modelling approaches and cutting-edge techniques to perform
the sequencing of single tumour cells. PERSIST-SEQ will refine and
standardize a broadly applicable workflow for single-cell
sequencing in order to improve the understanding of therapeutic
resistance in cancer and develop targeted prevention and mitigation
techniques.
“I am very excited to be part of this consortium. Not only
because of the importance of understanding tumour drug resistance,
but also because we will perform this project in close
collaboration with industrial partners. I am sure we will learn a
lot from each other” commented Prof. Alexander van Oudenaarden
(Hubrecht Institute), Principal Investigator of
PERSIST-SEQ.
Jean-Marc Balloul, Director Innovation & Partnership at
Transgene, added: “We are proud to participate in the
PERSIST-SEQ consortium and contribute to the deciphering of
immunotherapeutic resistance in cancer cells. Certain tumor cells
display pathways that allow them to resist therapeutic approaches
based on oncolysis, such as oncolytic viruses. Single-cell
sequencing will allow us to better understand these resistance
mechanisms and ultimately design immunotherapies that can overcome
this hurdle.”
About the PERSIST-SEQ consortium The ultimate goal of the
PERSIST-SEQ consortium is to improve the understanding of
therapeutic resistance in cancer and create effective strategies to
improve cancer treatment and prevent drug resistance. As a result
of this effort, the project anticipates a significant step forward
for the cancer community and its understanding of tumour
plasticity. This can change the way scientists and clinicians view
cancer and its related drug developments. In order to achieve this
goal, PERSIST-SEQ will develop a standardized approach to
single-cell sequencing workflows for the investigation of cells
pre-treatment. Uniquely, all experiments and pre-processing of data
will be done at Single Cell Discoveries. This will ensure
standardization and continuity of both experimental and
bioinformatics workflows throughout the project. Importantly,
PERSIST-SEQ will employ an open access model to build and sustain
its benchmarking procedures and centralized European data
infrastructure. This model reduces duplication of effort, thereby
promoting collaboration across disciplines and ensuring efficient
adoption of state-of-the-art single cell technologies. By
presenting an approach which is replicable, the PERSIST-SEQ
consortium will facilitate a further investigation of unaddressed
tumours and therapies. Therefore, the real impact of the project
will stem from the growth of innovation capacity associated with
the use of this approach across academic and industrial centres
around the world. PERSIST-SEQ is a public-private partnership
funded by the IMI, with representation from academic institutions,
small- and medium-sized enterprises, public organizations and
pharmaceutical companies. The partners involved in the project are
Oncode Institute, Hubrecht Institute, Netherlands Cancer Institute,
Single Cell Discoveries, Lygature, Wellcome Sanger Institute,
Fondazione del Piemonte per l’Oncologia, Hubrecht Organoid
Technology, Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB
Barcelona), Vall d’Hebron Institute of
Oncology, Xenopat, AstraZeneca, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany,
Bayer, Transgene, Charles River.
For more information, visit the PERSIST-SEQ website:
www.persist-seq.org
Acknowledgement of support PERSIST-SEQ receives funding
from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under
grant agreement No. 101007937. This Joint Undertaking receives
support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme and EFPIA. See www.imi.europa.eu for more
details.
About Transgene Transgene (Euronext: TNG) is a
biotechnology company focused on designing and developing targeted
immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer. Transgene’s programs
utilize viral vector technology with the goal of indirectly or
directly killing cancer cells. The Company’s clinical-stage
programs consist of two therapeutic vaccines (TG4001 for the
treatment of HPV-positive cancers, and TG4050, the first
individualized therapeutic vaccine based on the myvac® platform) as
well as two oncolytic viruses (TG6002 for the treatment of solid
tumors, and BT-001, the first oncolytic virus based on the
Invir.IO™ platform). With Transgene’s myvac® platform, therapeutic
vaccination enters the field of precision medicine with a novel
immunotherapy that is fully tailored to each individual. The myvac®
approach allows the generation of a virus-based immunotherapy that
encodes patient-specific mutations identified and selected by
Artificial Intelligence capabilities provided by its partner NEC.
With its proprietary platform Invir.IO™, Transgene is building on
its viral vector engineering expertise to design a new generation
of multifunctional oncolytic viruses. Transgene has an ongoing
Invir.IO™ collaboration with AstraZeneca. Additional information
about Transgene is available at: www.transgene.fr Follow us on
Twitter: @TransgeneSA
***
Disclaimer This press release contains forward-looking
statements, which are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties,
which could cause actual results to differ materially from those
anticipated. The occurrence of any of these risks could have a
significant negative outcome for the Company’s activities,
perspectives, financial situation, results, regulatory authorities’
agreement with development phases, and development. The Company’s
ability to commercialize its products depends on but is not limited
to the following factors: positive pre-clinical data may not be
predictive of human clinical results, the success of clinical
studies, the ability to obtain financing and/or partnerships for
product manufacturing, development and commercialization, and
marketing approval by government regulatory authorities. For a
discussion of risks and uncertainties which could cause the
Company’s actual results, financial condition, performance or
achievements to differ from those contained in the forward-looking
statements, please refer to the Risk Factors (“Facteurs de Risque”)
section of the Universal Registration Document, available on the
AMF website (http://www.amf-france.org) or on Transgene’s website
(www.transgene.fr). Forward-looking statements speak only as of the
date on which they are made, and Transgene undertakes no obligation
to update these forward-looking statements, even if new information
becomes available in the future.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210901005716/en/
Transgene: Lucie Larguier Director Corporate
Communications & IR +33 (0)3 88 27 91 04
investorrelations@transgene.fr
Transgene media: MEDiSTRAVA Consulting David
Dible/Sylvie Berrebi +44 (0)7714 306525
transgene@medistrava.com
PERSIST-SEQ
Lygature (partnership management): Yoanna
Daskalova Project Communications Manager +31 6 55 46 38 76
yoanna.daskalova@lygature.org
Oncode Institute: Elize Brolsma Communications
Manager +31 6 28 49 69 34 elize.brolsma@oncode.nl
Grafico Azioni Transgene (EU:TNG)
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Da Mar 2024 a Apr 2024
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