Ovarian Cancer Project Gathers Industry Support

A new £2.6 million project led by Swansea University (UK) that aims to dramatically improve the diagnosis and treatment of ovarian cancer, will involve collaboration with 5 key industrial partners - Porvair Sciences, Bruker UK, GE Healthcare UK, Axis Bio and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).  A new Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADC) company is also expected to join the project in its second year. ADC’s are a powerful new class of therapeutics in medical oncology, where antibodies that target specific cancers are coupled with cytotoxic agents. The Cluster for Epigenomic and Antibody Drug Conjugate Therapeutics (CEAT), which has been awarded £1.2 million from the European Regional Development Fund via the Welsh Government’s SMART Expertise programme and the Welsh European Funding Office, aims to use drugs and ADC’s to manipulate chemical compounds leading to a new route for treatment of ovarian cancer. 

Porvair Sciences aims to develop new epigenomic profiling techniques that are able to identify and characterise drugs that could be effective in preventing cancer development in ovarian cancer models. The company will also support the evaluation of the Antibody Drug Conjugates (ADCs) resulting from the CEAT project.

CEAT principal investigator - Dr. Lewis Francis from Swansea University’s School of Medicine commented “Epigenetics involves chemical changes to the DNA and associated proteins that can lead to genes being turned on or off. In some cases, this can go wrong and lead to disease. Through the CEAT project, Swansea University will work closely with CEAT partners to develop drugs that can control epigenetic signals; these epigenetic drugs can be targeted specifically towards ovarian cancer cells where epigenetic changes have occurred.”

Amy Johnson, Business and Technical Development Manager at Porvair Sciences commented “We are delighted to be involved with the CEAT project. This is a great opportunity for the project to leverage our bead-free ChIP technology and expertise to be at the forefront of developing epigenetic-based cancer therapies.”