Indivumed Announces Agreement with Regeneron to Provide Tissue Samples for Oncology Research and Development

HAMBURG, Germany, January 31, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Indivumed, GmbH (Indivumed) today announced that they have signed an agreement providing Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. with access to Indivumed's quality tissue sample and clinical and molecular data collection methods, to support the company's cancer research programs.

Under the terms of the agreement, Indivumed will provide Regeneron with tissue samples and associated, de-identified patient information from Indivumed's existing collaboration with Geisinger Health Systems. Indivumed will collect biospecimens and clinical data from consenting patients already undergoing a surgical tumor resection. Upon resection, a portion of the remaining tissue or blood, beyond what is required to make a clinical diagnosis, will be banked by Indivumed and made available to Regeneron and the Regeneron Genetics Center for research and development purposes.

"Indivumed's proprietary tumor tissue dissection, preservation process, and growing collection of high quality tumor tissues will aid Regeneron in developing better tumor models and gaining understanding of our pre-clinical oncology candidates", said Gavin Thurston, Ph.D., Vice President of Oncology and Angiogenesis at Regeneron. "We believe this collaboration will better inform our oncology pipeline, bolstering our ability to bring innovative medicines to cancer patients."

The agreement also includes terms for a biobanking collaboration to support sample collection at certain additional clinical sites. This will aid the parties' efforts to further develop proprietary biobanking protocols and enable biospecimen collection that fully preserves the molecular profile of cancer patients.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Based in Hamburg, Germany, Indivumed is an integrated oncology company that leverages its biorepository of human tissue samples with its diagnostic laboratory to develop individual cancer therapies. Indivumed maintains a biobank of tissues and annotated data from more than 25,000 patients - with about 1,600 new cases added per year-each collected under stringent specifications. The overall goal is understanding the biological difference between tumors and how patients respond to treatment to support the implementation of personalized therapy.

Research demonstrates that proteins change expression profiles significantly within minutes following surgical resection. Many of those proteins may serve as biomarkers for new drugs. For this reason, controlled and rapid tissue processing is necessary for understanding biological differences of/within patient tumors, especially when developing targeted therapies. Indivumed follows highly standardized processes that enable the company to limit cold ischemia time - the time between removal of tissue from the body and the time it is preserved - to less than 10 minutes in order to maintain tissue samples of high biological integrity.

Hartmut Juhl, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Indivumed stated, "We are excited to be supporting Regeneron in its work to develop the next generation of innovative cancer therapies." He went on to say that "Regeneron is recognized as a global leader in drug discovery and development."

About Indivumed GmbH  

INDIVUMED an ISO certified global oncology research company based in Hamburg, Germany, has established the world's leading Cancer Database and biobank, retaining unique patterns of biomolecules such as RNA, DNA, and proteins as they existed in the human body. This Cancer Database makes possible multi-omics capabilities that will allow for characterization of samples and data such as whole genome gene expression analysis, expression analysis of cancer relevant proteins, expression analysis of cancer relevant phosphoproteins and bioinformatic solutions for integrating molecular, biological and clinical information.

Indivumed's products and services allow for in-depth understanding of the underlying mechanisms of a patient's cancer, addressing important demands in translational research and molecular diagnostics to support implementation of personalized healthcare.

For more information, please visit http://www.indivumed.com

Contact:
Hartmut Juhl, MD
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Indivumed GmbH
+49-40-413383-0
press@indivumed.com