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The project will utilise The Open University’s expertise in characterisation of Neuroendocrine Prostate Cancer (“NEPC”), an incurable subtype of prostate cancer, to look for characteristic markers of NEPC in Inaphaea’s PDC models under normal and low oxygen conditions, known to promote an NEPC-like state.

In addition, Inaphaea’s parent company ValiRx will be co-sponsoring a PhD studentship over the course of four years at The Open University titled ‘Deciphering the epigenetic vulnerabilities of neuroendocrine prostate cancer through novel patient-derived models’. The four-year programme includes further characterisation and drug responsiveness of up to 12 of Inaphaea’s Patient Derived Prostate Cancer Cell systems as well as screening for novel epigenetic targets as potential novel treatment opportunities.

Dr Mark Eccleston, Inaphaea Director & ValiRx CEO commented: “Inaphaea has over 30 Patient Derived Cell models from prostate cancer patients, several with RNA-Seq data available. These cells have been stabilised for in vitro passage, but they are not characterised in terms of cancer subtype and drug sensitivity. Collecting and publishing this information is essential to enable the use of these cell lines by the scientific community. Hence, characterisation of the Inaphaea prostate PDCs could add significant value to this collection and generate an invaluable research tool for the NEPC community.”

Francesco Crea, Professor of Cancer Pharmacology at the Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics, The Open University commented: “Neuroendocrine prostate cancer is a newly recognised disease with no effective therapy and median survival time shorter than one year. It is estimated that a fifth of advanced prostate cancer patients will develop NEPC. Hence it is of paramount importance to study the biology of this aggressive disease and to identify viable therapeutic targets. This is hampered by the lack of preclinical NEPC models. In particular, only one patient derived NEPC cell line has been fully characterised and is available for experiments. Since NEPC is a highly heterogeneous disease, more cell lines are needed to recapitulate the full clinical spectrum of this deadly disease and to validate findings.”

ValiRc plc - Inaphaea BioLabs Subsidary Awarded HEIF Funding and PhD Sponsorship