MyBiotics Pharma Ltd., a microbiome therapeutics company, and Hadasit Medical Research Services and Development Ltd., the technology transfer office of Hadassah Medical Center, announced Tuesday that they have entered into a research collaboration and licensing agreement for the identification of microbiome-based therapeutics that will enhance the response to and reduce adverse effects of anti-PD-1 and anti-PD-L1 in melanoma patients.
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The two-year joint research project will be conducted by researchers from MyBiotics together with a team of researchers at Hadassah Cancer Research Institute headed by Prof. Michal Lotem, MD., Head of the Center for Melanoma and Cancer Immunotherapy, Department of Oncology at Hadassah Medical Center. It will be funded by MyBiotics, which has an exclusive license for all data and inventions stemming from the collaboration.
The research is aimed at assessing the composition of the gut microbiome and secondary metabolites (organic compounds produced by the gut bacteria) in up to 100 melanoma patients treated with PD-1/PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitors, some of which already exhibited long-term response to the treatment. Stool and blood samples will be collected at various time points along the treatment, for the purpose of identifying microbiome components that promote treatment success.
"Recent research supports the important role played by the microbiome in promoting the success of cancer immunotherapies, and points to the possibility of influencing the composition of the microbiome as an adjunct treatment," stated David Daboush, CEO of MyBiotics Pharma. "In this collaboration with Hadassah we will leverage Mybiotics' SuperDonor whole microbiome recovery technology in combination with the MyLiveIn computational and predictive tools to advance research in order to unravel new layers of understanding and findings that will enable the design of effective microbiome-based therapeutics."
"For years I have strived to study what was driving long-term survival of melanoma patients who did well beyond expectations," stated Lotem, adding, "This collaboration gives us advanced molecular and genomic tools to analyze treatment success. After years of studying how cancer deceives us, I cannot wait to translate lessons of the past to therapies of the future."
