Multi-year collaboration announced between Tessellate BIO, Omico and CMRI
Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Sydney, Australia 30 September 2024 - Tessellate BIO, a preclinical stage biotechnology company with a focus on novel Synthetic Lethality approaches, announces a collaboration with CMRI, Australia's leading pediatric medical research institute, and Omico, an organization uniting over 50 world-class cancer institutes in Australia and New Zealand.
The collaboration has been established to advance the understanding of the prevalence of alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) across tumor types and the genetic factors involved, and thereby accelerate the development of precision medicine tools and new cancer therapies. ALT is a mechanism that some cancer cells use to maintain the integrity of their telomeres during cell division, and is essential for their unlimited replicative potential. It builds on the collaboration with Tessellate BIO co-founder Prof. Hilda Pickett at CMRI.
The large genomically-characterized patient sample cohort was collected by Omico as part of the MoST (Cancer Molecular Screening and Therapeutics) program and has already allowed the partners to explore ALT prevalence in primary tissue samples utilizing the C-Circle Assay, the expected gold standard for establishing ALT status.
While ALT has been detected in 10 to 15% of all cancers, it has primarily been studied in cancers with ALT prevalence exceeding 50%, e.g., soft tissue sarcomas and osteosarcomas. Initial results of the Tessellate BIO – Omico – CMRI collaboration are already revealing the presence of ALT in cancers that were previously not associated with this mechanism of telomere maintenance.
Tessellate BIO is developing novel therapies specifically targeting ALT cancers and the collaboration contributes to its leadership position in the field of ALT biology and drug discovery.
Dr. Jurgen Moll, Tessellate BIO CSO, said: “The Omico - CMRI collaboration is instrumental for us to identify subpopulations of patients in different cancer indications that are driven by ALT and for which we are developing targeted drugs. In addition, we are excited about the opportunity to validate the C-Circle Assay to detect ALT+ cancer patients by screening a wide range of human cancer samples. This brings us closer to our aim: to make the C-Circle Assay the future gold standard for identifying these patients in the clinic – true precision medicine.”
Prof. Roger Reddel, CEO of CMRI and chair of the Tessellate BIO scientific advisory board, said:
Synthetic lethality has huge potential for the development of new cancer therapies but has so far been directed to only a small proportion of cancer types by targeting of Homologous Recombination Deficiency (HRD). This collaboration has been established to make a meaningful contribution to expanding lethality beyond HRD into ALT+ cancers through the development of new therapies and associated companion diagnostics.
Prof. David Thomas, Omico Chief Science and Strategy Officer, said: “We welcome this collaboration and to publishing the results in due course, with the aim to further the understanding of ALT cancers in the broader scientific community and eventually to develop new tools and therapies to improve patients’ lives.”
“Tessellate BIO is delighted with the collaboration and anticipates that the results will help therapies for ALT cancers become available to the right patients with the highest probability to benefit from them. The collaboration partners plan to publish their findings in the future,” said Tessellate BIO CEO Andree Blaukat.