Hadasit and Anadis to form joint venture
Israeli company Hadasit and Anadis, of Australia, are to form a new joint venture company tentatively called Immuron.
Israeli company Hadasit and Anadis, of Australia, are to form a new joint venture company tentatively called Immuron.
The mandate of the new company is to develop a new line of therapeutic products for the treatment of several inflammatory diseases, infectious diseases and cancers.
The products will be based on a combination of intellectual property from Hadasit and Anadis. Hadasit will contribute user-specific methods for the treatment of immune mediated disorders and cancer. Pre-clinical studies are due to begin in January to determine the efficacy of the products in animal models. Phase I clinical trials are expected to start in the second half of 2009.
The pre-clinical, Phase I and Phase II studies will be conducted at Hadasit at the new Hadassah Clinical Research Center at Hadassah University Hospital in Ein Kerem, Israel. The custom manufacturing of the commercial products will be conducted by Anadis and new intellectual property will be licensed back to Anadis for use in its additional research initiatives.
"Hadasit has a superb reputation as a centre of excellence for pre-clinical and early stage clinical practice," said Dr Oren Fuerst, vp for Business Development at Anadis and ceo of Immuron. "I anticipate that over the next five years the competitive landscape of biotherapy will be completely altered, with our new venture playing a central role."
Anadis is a research-driven biotechnology company focused on antibody-based health products. Its proprietary, rapid manufacturing technology has enabled it to develop a product pipeline of polyclonal antibody-based solutions to a range of important infectious and immune-mediated diseases.
The all-natural dairy-derived platform and its regulatory classification as GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe) when administered orally allows for a significantly shorter time-frame from bench to market compared with typical biotechnology products. The platform also possesses dramatically lower manufacturing costs and higher scalability compared to typical antibody-based solutions.
Hadasit is the technology transfer company of Hadassah Medical Organisation (HMO) in Jerusalem, and promotes and commercialises HMO's IP and r&d capabilities.