Pharmacia & Upjohn, the EIO and CRV sign agreement to discover new cancer targets

The European Institute of Oncology (EIO) in Milan, Pharmacia & Upjohn (PNU) and Cancer Research Ventures (CRV) have agreed to a multi-year research collaboration and license agreement to explore new targets for cancer drugs.

  • 20 January 2000

Today it was announced that the EIO and PNU have entered in to a multi-year research collaboration and license agreement to collaborate on the discovery and characterisation of novel protein kinases and signal transduction pathways which could provide targets for new cancer drugs.

Protein kinases are well-recognised molecular switches that can be selectively targeted by small drug molecules. Scientists at the Department of Experimental Oncology at EIO, chaired by Dr.Pier Giuseppe Pelicci, will apply their expertise in cell cycle and signal transduction to study the function of protein kinases in cancer cells. Scientists at PNU and Sugen, a biotechnology company recently acquired by PNU, will contribute their expertise in mechanism based drug discovery.

The agreement was arranged and negotiated on behalf of EIO by Cancer Research Ventures Limited (London. UK) the technology transfer company that was recently formed as a subsidiary of Cancer Research Campaign Technology Ltd.