The Division of Research Administration and Industry Ventures is composed of multiple departments that work closely together to enable research collaborations between MD Anderson and industry. From internal approval processes for contract execution and grant submission, to intellectual property management and strategic business development, the division helps facilitate strategic partnership opportunities on behalf of the institution.
How We Partner with Industry
Strategic Alliances
Strategic alliances aim to provide space for innovative collaborations to accelerate breathrough discoveries in cancer research. Our goal at the Office of Strategic Industry Ventures is to develop deeper and more robust relationships with companies that share a similar vision and goal.
Technology Commercialization
Technology transfer aims to transition institutional intellectual property to third parties for further development and commercialization. We cultivate relationships with reputable entities and entrepreneurs with a proven record of advancing technologies to the market.
Creative Solutions
The Office of Strategic Industry Ventures and Office of Technology Commercialization teams collaborate routinely to align interests and goals with stakeholders to deliver innovative pathways and contractual frameworks to partner with industry.
Highlights
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Xilis today announced a strategic collaboration to deploy Xilis’ proprietary MicroOrganoSphere™ (MOS) technology in support of preclinical research to accelerate the development of novel cancer therapies.
Under the agreement, the two organizations aim to advance drug development and discovery projects utilizing the MOS platform, which enables translational research on patient-derived micro tumors with new capabilities and at a scale not possible with current in vivo models. If successful, this platform may offer opportunities for third-party collaborations to guide the development of new drugs and cell therapies.
“Our research suggests the MOS platform has the potential to offer new capabilities and to improve the efficiency of developing innovative drugs and cell therapies over current xenograft and organoid models, which we hope will bring medicines to patients more quickly,” said Xiling Shen, Ph.D., chief executive officer and co-founder of Xilis. “We look forward to working with the MD Anderson team to discover and develop the next generation of cancer treatments, and we welcome further conversations with pharmaceutical firms for tripartite drug development opportunities.”
The MOS platform at MD Anderson will be run jointly by the Xilis and MD Anderson teams, and the collaboration will be led by three MD Anderson scientists: Timothy Heffernan, Ph.D., vice president of Oncology Research for MD Anderson’s Translational Research to AdvanCe Therapeutics and Innovation in ONcology (TRACTION) platform, Scott Kopetz, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, and Katy Rezvani, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Stem Cell Transplantation & Cellular Therapy.
The MOS technology provides the first reliable platform to rapidly assess how a patient’s tumor responds to a wide variety of cancer drug modalities within 14 days of obtaining harvested tumor cell samples while also sustaining the native tumor microenvironment. This is essential for determining the full spectrum of therapeutic effects, including immuno-oncology, in the clinic.
The platform also is capable of accelerating the development of disease models, enabling new opportunities to further support discovery research, translational science and drug development efforts. The collaborators intend to explore how the MOS platform could be used to establish new patient-derived models underrepresented in the field, such as rare cancers and treatment-resistant disease.
“The ability to rapidly screen many drugs ex vivo and to build an expansive catalog of disease models addressing unmet needs opens new avenues to advance impactful medicines,” Heffernan said. “Our collaboration with Xilis will allow us to evaluate this exciting technology as a tool to improve the scale, speed and capabilities of our translational research efforts.”
The TRACTION platform, a core component of MD Anderson’s Therapeutics Discovery division, is designed to accelerate the development of innovative cancer therapies and to identify the right treatment for the right patients. MD Anderson’s natural killer (NK) cell therapy program, led by Rezvani, is advancing novel treatments for a variety of cancers using engineered cord blood-derived NK cells.
“Developing impactful cell therapies requires an accurate determination of which cells can produce the desired effect prior to introduction in patients,” Rezvani said. “In collaboration with the Xilis team, we aim to deploy the MOS platform to enable rapid screening and increase our chances of clinical success in our NK cell therapy program.”
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Federation Bio today announced a strategic collaboration to design and manufacture a complex, synthetic microbial consortium with the goal of expanding the number of cancer patients who respond to immunotherapy. The agreement pairs Federation Bio’s proprietary ACT™ (anerobic co-culture technology) platform with the expertise and capabilities of MD Anderson’s Platform for Innovative Microbiome and Translational Research (PRIME-TR).
Immune checkpoint inhibitors and other forms of immunotherapy have dramatically improved outcomes for many with cancer, but many patients do not benefit from these treatments. Previous work, including research led by MD Anderson, demonstrates the gut microbiome is a key mediator of individual response to checkpoint inhibitors. Further, early findings suggest that fecal microbiota transplants (FMT) from individuals who respond to checkpoint inhibitors may improve outcomes for those who did not previously benefit. Unfortunately, the application of FMT in this setting has been hindered by the inability to scale up manufacturing or modify FMT for enhanced therapeutic benefit.
Under the agreement, MD Anderson and Federation Bio intend to rationally design a complex consortium of bacteria derived from a donor fecal sample that has a demonstrated ability to improve immunotherapy responses in cancer patients via FMT in a clinical trial. Federation Bio will use its proprietary ACTTM platform to manufacture the consortium from purified cell lines, generating a therapy that comprises the full metabolic complexity of the identified microbiome and is optimized for therapeutic benefit.
“Federation Bio’s demonstrated ability to engineer complex, synthetic bacterial consortia and produce them at scale offers an exciting avenue to potentially improve cancer immunotherapy responses,” said Jennifer Wargo, M.D., professor of Genomic Medicine and Surgical Oncology and director of PRIME-TR at MD Anderson. “Published evidence supports the potential of this approach, and we believe this collaboration will enable us to accelerate the development and evaluation of microbial cell therapies for our patients.”
Federation Bio’s ACTTM platform uniquely enables the production of highly controlled bacterial consortia that have been rationally designed to address a broad range of diseases and disorders. The company already has used the platform to design and manufacture FB-001, an investigational oral therapy consisting of 148 bacterial strains isolated from multiple healthy donors. Federation Bio currently is evaluating FB-001 in a Phase I clinical trial; it is the first rationally designed complex consortium at this scale to enter clinical studies.
“We are proud to be collaborating with MD Anderson, an institution that is leading the charge globally to advance microbiome-based approaches that could dramatically improve outcomes for cancer patients,” said Emily Drabant Conley, Ph.D., chief executive officer at Federation Bio. “We’ve demonstrated that our ACTTM platform enables the manufacture of complex, rationally designed microbial consortia at scale through the manufacture of FB-001, and this collaboration enables us to explore its potential in oncology, where there is both high unmet need and evidence supporting the critical role of the microbiome in driving therapeutic response.”
PRIME-TR is a novel institutional platform that aims to transform the landscape of cancer treatment, diagnosis and prevention through studying and targeting the microbiome at multiple different niches. Supported by MD Anderson’s Moon Shots Program®, PRIME-TR works to advance microbiome-based applications as a complement to other foundational discoveries and cancer treatments, including immune-based strategies and other therapeutic approaches.
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