Within the field of oncology, the clinical development of so-called precision medicine through the impact of immunotherapy has shown to be one of the most promising and life-saving therapeutic areas of the last decade. Even though great progress has been made, TRACER believes it can be done faster. With our unique working methodology we reduce the time-to-market to benefit all stakeholders in the process, including patient welfare as a whole.
Through the early success of more tumor-specific drugs like imatinib (Glivec), this has given rise to an exponential development of novel therapeutics for cancer treatment and in particular smart drugs which target specific pathways for cancer growth and more recently immunotherapy, which boosts or supports the innate immune system to fight cancer. Several types of immunotherapy can be distinguished, including:
- monoclonal antibodies and tumor-agnostic therapies
- non-specific immunotherapies,
- oncolytic virus therapy
- T-cell therapy
- cancer vaccines.
TRACER has a long-standing experience in fluorescent and nuclear labelling of antibodies, nanobodies, bispecific antibodies, and antibody-drug conjugates. More recently TRACER also initiated the 1st steps into molecular imaging of T-cell therapy.
Nevertheless, despite the success of agents like Glivec and immune checkpoint inhibitors, considerable side effects or resistance can occur. Especially related to the on- and off-target characteristics of the therapeutic compound. Moreover, during early phase drug development, phase 0 and I, no clear go / no-go decisions can be made. This stems from the fact that there is no reliable data in these phases on the on- and off-target characteristics in vivo.
How we help developing your oncology drugs.
TRACER provides disruptive technology through fluorescent and nuclear molecular imaging, combined with the practice of FDA approved in-human microdosing. These techniques deliver in-human data to pharmaceutical companies in a very early phase of the drug development process. Namely, on whether their proprietary therapeutic compound in the target population, i.e. patients with solid tumors from any type, has a significant on- and off-target effect. This may enforce an early go/no-go decision whether the compound should be taken to the next development phase. For example, phase I dose-finding, II and III.