Wistar Institute and PhoreMost launch drug discovery collaboration

The shared goal is the identification and validation of novel druggable sites in disease pathways, and the development of a pipeline of novel therapeutic targets in the oncology and immunology space.

"PhoreMost is a cutting-edge discovery partner that will be collaborating closely with Wistar to uncover previously unidentified therapeutic targets that may prove useful for advancing innovative therapies," said Heather Steinman, Ph.D., M.B.A., Wistar vice president for Business Development and executive director, Technology Transfer.

"We are eager to be partnering with PhoreMost to fully utilize their phenotype-based screening platform technology to rapidly identify new therapeutic candidates."

Creative partnerships between academia and industry are crucial to future drug discovery success as advances in science lead to a deeper understanding of disease biology. Maximizing the value and impact of Wistar science means collaborating with dynamic biotech start-ups at the earliest stages of basic science. PhoreMost’s mission is to uncover hard-to-identify drug targets, thereby "Drugging the Undruggable".

Combined with Wistar’s deep understanding of disease pathways and strong expertise developing physiologically relevant model systems, this complementary alliance could heed valuable therapeutic possibilities.

"PhoreMost and Wistar share the belief that innovative small biotechs working together with co-invested academic and clinical partners could represent a new model for drug discovery to increase the diversity of new therapies being developed and bring them to patients at lower costs," said Chris Torrance, Ph.D., CEO of PhoreMost.

"I am delighted that The Wistar Institute is a founding member in this mission and encourage other academic and clinical institutes to join us in this mission."

PhoreMost has developed a next generation phenotypic screening platform called SITESEEKER that can mine and reveal previously-hidden druggable sites that could eventually become important targets for future therapies. Using a novel "Protein-interference" screening platform, it links these targets and pathways to useful functions in disease.

"We are very excited to be launching a new partnership with PhoreMost to look at how agents that promote specific genes may inhibit melanoma metastasis," said Ashani Weeraratna, Ph.D., associate professor in Wistar’s Tumor Microenvironment and Metastasis Program.

"Our data will benefit from identifying sites on proteins that could one day become potential drug targets and may have great clinical impact."