2017/8/22
TaiRx Announces License Agreement with Northwestern University and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, for Nodal Patents to Develop Novel Methods for Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment
TaiRx, Inc. today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Northwestern University and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Under the terms of the agreement, TaiRx will acquire the rights to a portfolio of patents using Nodal as a new target for treatment and diagnosis of cancers. The original group of inventors at Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, was led by Dr. Mary Hendrix, who served at that time as President and Chief Scientific Officer of Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute of Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Dr. Hendrix is currently the President of Shepherd University in West Virginia, and her laboratory is located at West Virginia University Cancer Institute.
Nodal is known to be highly expressed in various malignant cancers, especially associated with the cancer stem cell phenotype. Dr. Hendrix’s group has shown that an antibody directed against Nodal effectively decreases tumor cell growth and induces cell apoptosis in certain tumor types. TaiRx will further develop this technology as a new treatment strategy for targeting cancer stem cells and also as a biomarker to be used with its clinical compound, CVM-1118, which is currently in clinical Phase I development as a potential next-generation treatment for various aggressive cancers.