Kiadis Pharma announces continued collaboration with Professor Velardi on its lead product ATIR™
(NL version) | go backOncology focused biopharmaceutical company Kiadis Pharma announces today that Andrea Velardi, M.D., Professor of Clinical Immunology at the University of Perugia, Italy and Kiadis Pharma are continuing their collaboration on ATIR™, a product in clinical development for enabling the use of a mismatched donor in a bone marrow transplantation by preventing acute Graft versus Host Disease (GvHD) for end stage leukemia patients. Under the agreement Professor Velardi will continue the development on the selective depletion of allo-reactive T cells from mismatched donors using Kiadis Pharma’s ATIR™. Kiadis Pharma is preparing for a multi-center pivotal study on ATIR™ to start early 2009 and Professor Velardi will participate in this upcoming study.
“We are very pleased with our continued collaboration with the University of Perugia and Professor Velardi, who is a leader in the field of mismatched bone marrow transplantations,” says Dr. Manja Bouman, CEO of Kiadis Pharma. “This collaboration is an important milestone in the development of ATIR™ as a revolutionary approach to provide safe and potentially life-saving mismatched bone marrow transplantations as a treatment option for end-stage leukemia patients.”
Professor Andrea Velardi says: “So far, we have treated 25 blood cancer patients who have received bone marrow from mismatched donors, including donor immune cells that are selectively depleted of cells causing acute Graft versus Host Disease using the ATIR™ process. The results so far are promising and I am therefore very pleased to continue to work with Kiadis Pharma in this field.”
About ATIR™
ATIR™ is designed to prevent life-threatening acute GvHD by eliminating the immune cells from the donor graft that otherwise attack the patient’s body. Useful donor immune cells that can fight infections and remaining tumor cells are, however, spared, allowing rapid and safe donor immune reconstitution post transplantation. Acute GvHD is one of the complications of allogeneic bone marrow transplantations. By preventing acute GvHD, ATIR™ enables the use of a mismatched (haplo identical) donor thereby addressing a significant limitation in bone marrow transplantations, which is the timely availability of a donor. By allowing the re-infusion of relatively large numbers of treated donor T-cells in the patient safely, without causing life threatening acute GvHD, ATIR™ can help fight infections early on and improve the successful outcome of a transplantation.
