AIMS teams with European biopharma on cancer project

The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) has entered into a collaborative agreement with Austrian-German drug development company Faustus to develop new anti-cancer leads from natural sources.

AIMS' marine biotechnology research group head Dr Chris Battershill said the agreement was fairly modest in the early stages, but had the potential to grow. "It's worth over AUD$1 million to AIMS over three years, with the potential to follow up additional leads to invoke new funding," he said. "In the greater scheme of things it is a modest initial interaction but we're confident we can fast-track it."

Under the terms of the agreement, three scientists will be appointed at AIMS to work on the project, which will focus on discovery of compounds with anti-cancer activity from lower invertebrates such as sea sponges and other marine organisms that have already elicited active compounds.

Battershill said the researchers would look for compounds with specific and targeted activity against tumour cell growth and related metabolic processes by using existing compounds isolated from marine sources to search for similar compounds.

"This is not a high-throughput screening program -- it's almost the opposite," he said. "We're picking up on our understanding of any anti-cancer compounds discovered in the sea and widening our discovery. It focuses on an understanding on the role of compounds in nature."

The team plans to use AIMS' existing marine extract library initially, and then expand into other species to identify similar compounds. A number of promising leads have already been identified.

"We have chosen to work with AIMS because it is one of the world's best known addresses in screening and purification of extracts from nature and is ideally located with access to an exciting and promising natural environment," said Faustus director Dr Berndt Kynast in a statement. "AIMS' experience in collecting and purification of extracts in combination with strong skills in structure elucidation and synthesis of complex organic compounds will be progressed by [Faustus'] experience in development of drug candidates through pre-clinical and clinical evaluation in this cooperation."

AIMS will retain intellectual property and patents resulting from the collaboration. Battershill said that Faustus had also indicated it would be interested in opportunities for partnering further within Australia, in addition to partnering with pharma to take products through clinical trials.

AIMS has other anti-cancer drug discovery relationships in place, including an agreement allowing access to the US's National Cancer Institute's panel of tumour cell lines to test compounds for activity.