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Prostate Centre's Translational Research Initiative for Accelerated Discovery and Development - PC-TRiADD

$26.3 million for 2008-18
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Prostate Centre's Translational Research Initiative for Accelerated Discovery and Development

Headquarters
Vancouver, British Columbia

CEO
Martin Gleave Martin Gleave

Board chair
Conrad Pinette Conrad Pinette
President, Condor Holdings

Bringing new prostate drugs to patients sooner


Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, striking more than 22,000 Canadians each year and killing approximately 4,300. While new anti-cancer drugs have succeeded in prolonging life, the cancer can often become resistant to these same drugs and spread to other parts of the body. The shift in cancer research from chemical to biological-based treatments offers hope, and Canada’s universities are among the world’s best in this field. A new hybrid model for commercializing university research – one that can act as a bridge between academia and the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry to bring novel therapies to patients sooner – was needed.

Among the results

  • OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals has advanced two new cancer-fighting drugs to Phase II and Phase III studies with more than 3,000 patients. Custersin and OGX-427 were shown to have anti-cancer activity in prostate and other cancers. These drugs were discovered and outlicensed from PC-TRiADD to OncoGenex, and PC-TRiADD provided critical pre-clinical development and access to a national clinical trial network.
  • PC-TRiADD spinoff Aquinox Pharmaceuticals raised $98 million in its initial public offering on the NASDAQ stock exchange, for continued development of novel drug candidates to treat inflammation and cancer. Other PC-TRiADD spinoffs include Andronex Pharmaceuticals, Sitka Biopharma and OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals.
  • A PC-TRiADD researcher was the first in the world to successfully grow early stage human prostate cancer tissue in hosts, giving scientists unprecedented levels of accuracy in seeing how patient-specific prostate tumours respond to drug therapies or develop drug resistance.
  • Thanks to commercialization support from PC-TRiADD, a new drug technology that could one day be used to treat advanced prostate cancers that have become resistant to existing treatments, received a licensing deal worth up to US$140 million from Roche. Research will continue in collaboration with PC-TRiADD and the Vancouver Prostate Centre.

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