GREENVILLE, S.C. & PARIS, France – November 18, 2019 – KIYATEC, Inc. and CarThera announce today that they have entered into a clinical collaboration for the purpose of advancing innovation and improving treatments for patients diagnosed with glioblastoma, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer that afflicts more than 130,000 patients worldwide per year and is characterized by historically poor clinical outcomes. The collaboration will focus on accelerating the development and validation of their emerging technologies to improve both the selection and effectiveness of drugs commonly recommended and used to treat the disease.
“Relevant clinical advances that improve outcomes for patients with glioblastoma have been few and far between over the last two decades,” said Frederic Sottilini, CEO of CarThera. “Despite multimodal therapy, median survival remains around 15 months for these patients, virtually all of whom recur. Our goal is to optimize the selection and delivery of drug therapies to extend the lives of patients with glioblastoma.”
The two companies were brought together by one of the world’s leading neuro-oncology and glioblastoma experts, John de Groot, M.D., professor and chairman ad interim, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, who recognized the synergistic nature of their respective clinical initiatives. CarThera is currently conducting a multi-center clinical study of its novel ultrasound technology, SonoCloud-9, designed to increase the permeability of the blood brain barrier to improve the delivery of chemotherapeutic agents to the brains of patients with recurrent glioblastoma. KIYATEC is conducting a multi-center clinical study of its ex vivo 3D cell culture technology to accurately predict pre-treatment, patient-specific response to recommended standard of care cancer drugs for newly diagnosed and recurrent glioblastoma.
“As someone who cares for patients with glioblastoma, I applaud the efforts of CarThera and KIYATEC to bring evidence-based advances to the clinic for the purpose of improving outcomes for patients with glioblastoma,” said Dr. de Groot. “I envision these two technologies as being complementary with the potential to transform the way in which neuro-oncologists manage glioblastoma patients.”
Under the terms of the clinical collaboration, KIYATEC will conduct ex vivo drug response profiling on glioblastoma tissue samples from patients enrolled in CarThera’s clinical study. CarThera will benefit from having ex vivo drug response profiling for patients enrolled in its study, while KIYATEC will correlate its patient-specific, pre-treatment drug response predictions with actual clinical outcomes of patients in CarThera’s study. For both companies, this collaboration represents an opportunity to enrich their portfolios of clinical evidence with the goal of helping clinicians improve outcomes for their patients with glioblastoma.
“Both of our companies are dedicated to ensuring that glioblastoma patients receive the most appropriate drug therapy at the right time, and that the efficacy of that therapy is maximized to its fullest therapeutic potential,” said Matthew Gevaert, CEO and co-founder of KIYATEC. “We believe that this clinical collaboration has the potential to help us accelerate and deliver on the long-awaited promise of personalized medicine for these deserving patients.”
Both companies will be sending delegates to the 24th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuro-Oncology, November 20-24 in Phoenix, Arizona.
KIYATEC leverages its proprietary ex vivo 3D cell culture technology platforms to accurately model and predict response to approved and investigational cancer drugs targeting a spectrum of solid tumors. The company’s Drug Development Services business works in partnership with leading biopharmaceutical companies to unlock response dynamics for its investigational drug candidates across the majority of solid tumor types. The company’s Clinical Services business is currently engaged in the validation of clinical assays as well as investigator-initiated studies in ovarian cancer, breast cancer, glioblastoma and rare tumors, in its CLIA-certified laboratory. To learn more about KIYATEC, visit www.kiyatec.com.
About CarThera
CarThera designs and develops innovative therapeutic ultrasound-based medical devices for treating brain disorders. The company is a spin-off from AP-HP, Greater Paris University Hospitals, the largest hospital group in Europe, and Sorbonne University. Since 2010, CarThera has been leveraging the inventions of Professor Alexandre Carpentier, a neurosurgeon at AP-HP who has achieved worldwide recognition for his innovative developments in treating brain disorders. CarThera developed SonoCloud, an intracranial ultrasound implant that temporarily opens the blood-brain barrier (BBB). CarThera is based at the Brain and Spine Institute (Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle épinière, ICM) in Paris, France, and has laboratories at the Bioparc Laënnec business incubator in Lyon, France. The company, led by Frederic Sottilini (CEO), works closely with the Laboratory of Therapeutic Applications of Ultrasound (Laboratoire Thérapie et Applications Ultrasonores, LabTAU, INSERM) in Lyon. www.carthera.eu