Crown Bioscience, Inc. has announced that an agreement has been reached with the National Resource Center for Mutant Mice (NRCMM), in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China.

The strategic partnership will focus on developing new experimental cancer models to advance translational medical research and the treatment of cancers.

The immediate focus of the research collaboration will be to build new experimental models for cancer research leveraging the proprietary technologies of both companies.

The collaboration is expected to significantly expand the research capabilities of both organizations in translational oncology and will thus benefit the global research community fighting cancers.

Crown Bioscience is the premier service provider of translational oncology and metabolic diseases platforms providing focused disease models. It has one of the largest and most advanced translational oncology platforms featuring fully annotated collections of proprietary patient derived xenograft (PDX) models (>1000).

NRCMM is a leading research organization specialized in genetically engineered mutant mouse (GEMM), with vast resources, including a large collection of GEMMs, many of which mimic human cancers. Both parties have complimentary expertise and experience in Oncology and GEMMs, and therefore the established joint effort will have great synergy in creating new translational oncology platforms based on GEMMs.

The collaboration will offer significantly expanded new mouse cancer and leukemia models based on GEMM as well as new human xenografts, in addition to the current PDX and CDX platforms (Cell line Derived Xenograft) at Crown and the current GEMMs at NRCMM.

In particular, novel mouse strains with various humanizations could be particularly powerful tools for immune-oncology research and immunotherapy drug evaluations.

After the signing of the agreement, Dr. Jean-Pierre Wery, Crown’s President, commented: “Crown plays a leading role in providing cutting-edge translational platforms and cost effective drug development solutions for almost all top pharmaceutical companies worldwide. Crown is very happy to partner with NRCMM, the leading research institute for genetically engineered animals in China. This partnership will offer world-class translational oncology services, and ultimately benefit cancer patients around the world. This collaboration will further strengthen Crown’s leading position as the oncology translational medicine partner for drug discovery organizations worldwide”.

Dr. Gao, Director of NRCMM, also commented: “As the largest government-funded research institute focusing on genetically engineered mice in China, NRCMM is an important member of the global community of GEMM research. Working together with a world leading translational oncology service provider, such as Crown, the combined expertise of Crown in oncology and our GEMM can certainly offer great GEMM-based oncology platforms to our partners in China and around the world. We are certainly excited about this opportunity.”