Cellectar Biosciences and Pierre Fabre Form Oncology Pact

French pharmaceutical company Pierre Fabre and biotech firm Cellectar Biosciences, Inc., announced that they have entered into a collaboration that will look at combining Cellectar's proprietary phospholipid drug conjugates (PDC) delivery platform with a selection of Pierre Fabre's proprietary cytotoxics.

PDCs are a new class of small-molecules that employ Cellectar's validated phospholipid ether-based cancer targeting and delivery vehicle. The PDC platform possesses the ability to incorporate diverse oncologic payloads for targeted delivery to a broad range of solid and liquid tumors, including brain metastases, as well as cancer stem cells.

The aim of this research collaboration is to co-design a library of constructs and to achieve in-vivo proof-of-concept of the superiority of these PDCs to the corresponding naked payloads. Because of their lipid rafts-mediated distribution properties, PDCs are expected to provide enhanced therapeutic indices to otherwise highly potent payloads through targeted delivery to cancer cells.

Pierre Fabre will provide the payloads and its know-how in the design of natural product-derived active conjugates, as well as its prior expertise into small-molecule drug conjugates (SMDCs).

Cellectar will provide its proprietary PDC platform technology and will be in charge of conducting the drug-discovery program up to preclinical stage and, should it be successful, to clinical evaluation.

Pierre Fabre has been granted the option to license any, or all, of the new drug conjugates developed as part of the research collaboration, while Cellectar will own all intellectual property (IP) associated with the new drug conjugates.

Source: Pierre Fabre, Cellectar Biosciences