Crown Bioscience Passes 1000 Model Mark in PDX Collection for Oncology Drug Discovery

Crown Bioscience, Inc., a leading global drug discovery and development service company, has announced its HuPrime® PDX (Patient-Derived Xenograft) model collection has now passed the 1,000 individual models mark.

The HuPrime model collection, many of which are maintained ‘in life’, enable drug discovery companies to run Clinical Trial-like studies, or HuTrialTM, using human surrogate models in mice. Such a comprehensive and diverse collection of well characterized models offers pharmaceutical and biotech partners a unique tool to improve the selection and development path for promising clinical candidates. This can significantly accelerate research programs, reducing the costs and failure rates of drug candidate development.

Patient-Derived Xenografts (PDX) involve extracting human tumor tissues directly from patients and transplanting them into surrogate immunodeficient mice. These models enable drug development and discovery companies to identify genetic signatures of disease, and discover and validate predictive biomarkers (HuSignature™) via performing human surrogate Phase II-like trials (HuTrial).
Crown Bioscience has greatly expanded its capacity maintaining hundred of models live and running 10s of large-scale HuTrial efficacy studies in parallel, acquiring results in months, as opposed to years, and at a significantly lower cost compared to standard human clinical trials. In addition to this unique Mouse Clinical Trial capacity, the accumulated HuTrial experience together with newly developed trial design and HuSignature algorithms, greatly enhances Crown’s ability to help partners obtain vital preclinical information essential to the success of their key clinical trials. By validating efficacy, studying and understanding mechanisms of action and resistance and identifying biomarkers, it is possible to improve the stratification of patient populations that may benefit from treatment regimens before entering the clinic.

Jean-Pierre Wery, President of Crown Bioscience, comments, “Passing the 1,000 model mark is a significant milestone in our mission to deliver the ‘gold standard’ in well-characterized models and services to help reduce the attrition rate of candidate compounds in the clinic, before they enter the clinic. As drug discovery continues to rapidly evolve, there is a growing desire to screen candidates earlier with more patient-relevant disease models. We believe that through using models which more closely reflect the patient situation in the clinic, we can significantly accelerate our client’s research programs by helping them make better informed decisions about which compounds to progress into clinical trials.”

He continues, “Our comprehensive collection of models is continuing to rapidly expand and evolve, supported by our databases which enable our clients to rapidly identify models which best suit their needs. Screening candidates earlier with more patient-relevant disease models is helping improve the selection of candidates that are taken forward into the clinic. Earlier informed decision making and shorter trials are redefining the cost and success rate in drug development and discovery.”

Crown’s unique database of HuPrime models, HuBaseTM offers a comprehensive database of genotypic, pharmacological, and clinical data, allowing clients to identify and choose the models that meet their criteria based on gene expression, RNAseq, copy number, response to Standard of Care, and many other criteria.

Crown Bioscience has a global footprint, spanning three major continents in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. The company offers a unique collection of ready-to-run, well-validated in vitro and in vivo models, model development expertise, comprehensive drug discovery platforms, and global capacity to help clients quantify the real efficacy and pharmacological profile of their candidates before they move into the clinic. As the largest supplier of translational oncology services, Crown Bioscience is committed to providing its pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical customers with specialized techniques and services to help the world-wide research community turn cancer from an incurable into a manageable, chronic disease and discover new targets and therapies in the treatment of metabolic diseases.