Status: Completed
Start Date: March 2013
End Date: July 2013
In this collaboration, Biovista is working with DART Therapeutics Inc., to develop therapies for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD).
DMD is a pediatric rare disease that affects approximately 1 in 3,600 boys worldwide. It is caused by a genetic mutation that renders boys unable to make functional dystrophin, a protein critical for normal muscle function. Young men with the disease show progressive signs of physical impairment as early as age three, lose the ability to walk in their teens, and die of cardiac or respiratory failure in their late twenties or early thirties.
The collaboration will deliver speed, efficiency and reduced costs to DART’s drug repositioning initiative. Biovista’s capabilities are based on its COSS platform, which combines predictive mechanism-of-action modeling, very large scale resource mining and in vitro/vivo verification to conduct rigorous benefit/risk profiling in a translational medicine context. The COSS platform is currently one of the largest databases of its kind in the world. Biovista’s team of biologists, physicians, epidemiologists and IP experts will work with DART to evaluate and rank high-value opportunities generated by the COSS platform, providing DART with a short-list of robust, de-risked candidates appropriate for potential development.
Under the terms of the agreement, Biovista will identify novel repositioning candidates and DART Therapeutics will have the option to select a certain number for further development. The terms of the agreement include an upfront and downstream success payments.
For More Information
Find out more about DMD and how Dart Therapeutics (Akashi Therapeutics as of June 2014) is working to develop novel therapies for this rare genetic disease.