BioCentury
ARTICLE | Product R&D

Astellas opts for PR1

Astellas acquires an option to license first-in-class mAb for AML

April 16, 2015 7:00 AM UTC

In its latest move to use academic collaborations to build out its oncology pipeline, Astellas Pharma Inc. has licensed an option from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to a first-in-class antibody against the PR1 leukemia-associated antigen. The researchers believes the new mechanism could make a difference in myeloid cancers that have thus far been intractable to standard therapies.

The new deal comes five months after Astellas announced a partnership with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to discover small molecule inhibitors of the KRAS oncogene...