University Spins Off Biomarker Targeting Company

Vincent Castronovo (Université de Liège)

The University of Liège in Belgium announced the first spin-off company, called Targetome, from GIGA, the university’s applied geno-proteomics center. The company is led by Vincent Castronovo (pictured left), a university faculty member on whose research the company is based.

The company is developing a new technique to identify biomarkers which are over-expressed in certain types of cancer. Castronovo, who has patented the technology, believes it can open up  new types of of diagnostics and therapies, enabling early detection, more efficient localization by imaging malign lesions, and their selective destruction. He calls this approach a “clean war” against cancer, one that has “the advantage of sparing the healthy tissues in order to focus on the cancerous cells.”

Castronovo says the company’s in-vitro method for screening accessible biological markers in pathologic tissues enables the identification of biomarkers with three essential qualities for a high-value target: abundant in the cancer lesions, specific, and accessible, which means reachable by antibodies. This approach identifies potential therapeutic targets through the blood stream — same path used most likely for the administration of the targeted therapy.

This technique, says Castronovo, has already enabled the identification, and in part the validation, of some 50 biomarkers over-expressed in six types of cancer, including breast cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphoma (a cancer of lymphoid tissues), glioblastoma (cancer of the brain), bone metastases, hepatic metastases (liver), and cancer of the pancreas.

For the most promising biomarkers, Targetome plans to produce monoclonal antibodies necessary for preclinical trials (in vitro and on mice). The company, says Castronovo, will in its early stages concentrate on hepatic metastases and pancreatic cancer.

Related: Small Business Grants to Develop Personalized Cancer Tests

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