Toronto Recombinant Antibody Centre (TRAC) from the University of Toronto, Canada have agreed to license MedGenome’s patented cancer immunotherapy solution OncoPept for the development of biomarkers for their drug candidates against immune modulators to treat cancer.

The licensing will form the basis of a larger partnership between the two organizations that can be leveraged to bring novel antibody drugs to the Indian market.

India adds over one million new cancer cases every year with greater than 60% mortality due to lack of effective therapies. Highly effective antibody drugs take years before they become available in India, and when available, have limited market uptake because of the price barrier. For example, the cost of treatment for the new cancer immunotherapy drugs can be as high as Rs One crore for a year of therapy.

This provides a great opportunity for the Indian pharma companies to take advantage from the partnership between MedGenome and TRAC to bring new cancer immunotherapy drugs to the Indian market at affordable prices and further enhance the effectiveness of therapy by using the OncoPept platform to identify patients who will benefit maximally from the treatment.

 Sam Santhosh, Founder of MedGenome, said “TRAC has the best platform in the world for producing novel biologics. We are proud to partner with them by providing our OncoPept solution which can also help Pharmaceutical companies select the right patients for their clinical trials.”

Dr. Sachdev Sidhu, Professor at University of Toronto said, “MedGenome’s pipeline to dissect the tumor microenvironment at a molecular level will help in identifying new targets for which novel antibodies can be made. MedGenome’s unique knowledge in analyzing diseases at a population level through its research arm in India provides an unprecedented opportunity to create drugs that can be more effective in certain population groups.”