Cyclenium Pharma and Vuja De Sciences Announce Oncology Drug Discovery Collaboration

NATICK, Mass. & HOBOKEN, N.J. & MONTREAL--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Cyclenium Pharma, Inc. (“Cyclenium”), an emerging pharmaceutical company specializing in the discovery and development of novel therapeutic agents based on their proprietary macrocyclic chemistry, and Vuja De Sciences, Inc. (“Vuja De”), a biotechnology startup dedicated to discovering therapies that target the unique vulnerability of undetected disseminated tumor cells before they can cause deadly metastatic cancer recurrence, have announced today the signing of a drug discovery collaboration agreement. The companies will screen and optimize lead candidates to advance treatments uniquely suited for preventing cancer metastatic recurrence, the biggest unmet need in oncology.

The collaboration will exploit Vuja De’s proprietary anti-metastatic progression in vitro and ex vivo drug discovery screening platform and Cyclenium’s proprietary QUEST™ Library of next generation synthetic small-molecule macrocycles and associated optimization expertise to identify clinical candidates effective against dormant disseminated tumor cells for the prevention of metastatic cancer recurrence. Vuja De will be responsible for all screening efforts, while Cyclenium will be responsible for all medicinal chemistry efforts to generate new optimized macrocyclic compounds by employing its unique CMRT™ Technology.

“We are very excited about entering this collaboration with Vuja De,” stated Helmut Thomas, Ph.D., President, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Scientific Officer of Cyclenium. “We are confident that our CMRT™ Technology and proven success in the macrocycle area combined with the innovative anti-metastatic progression platform and excellent research team at Vuja De will enable the discovery and development of novel macrocyclic therapeutic agents to effectively control metastatic progression.”

“We highly appreciate Cyclenium’s expertise in the macrocycle area and their technology platform that is based on over 20 years of pioneering experience in small molecule macrocyclic chemistry,” said David Warshawsky, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Vuja De. “We are very pleased to work with Cyclenium on identifying and developing novel game-changing drug candidates that prevent metastatic recurrence, the most urgent need of most cancer patients,” he added.

About Cyclenium Pharma

Cyclenium Pharma is an emerging, privately held pharmaceutical research and development company exploiting its proprietary next generation CMRT™ macrocyclic drug discovery technology for the discovery and development of novel small molecule therapeutic agents to address areas of unsatisfied medical need. Cyclenium is creating value through progression of internal programs in oncology, infectious diseases and inflammation/pain. In addition, Cyclenium is providing its extensive experience and exploring its CMRT-based QUEST™ screening library in risk-sharing partnerships with leading academic and research driven non-profit organizations, as well as collaborations with innovative pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies world-wide seeking to modulate unique and difficult disease targets in diverse therapeutic areas. For more information see: www.cyclenium.com.

About Vuja De Sciences

Vuja De is a biotechnology startup company dedicated to discovering and developing therapies that target the unique vulnerability of undetected disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) before they can cause deadly metastatic cancer recurrence. This vulnerability of DTCs stems from their dependence on a unique phenotype that includes stress adaptation, survival & dormancy, which we have coined “Metastatic Endurance” (ME). ME enables DTCs to persist undetected at secondary sites like “ticking time-bombs” and eventually start to rapidly divide and form overt deadly tumors. We successfully created the first-ever cell-based and ex vivo drug screening platform that finds drugs that target ME. We are using the largely adolescent, orphan disease, osteosarcoma, as the best proof of concept model for developing anti metastatic progression drugs for many cancers such as breast, melanoma and kidney. We are testing repurposed drugs that have previously been in clinical trials, as well as novel preclinical drugs. For more information, please visit vujade-life.com.

About Osteosarcoma

Osteosarcoma is an aggressive cancer of the bone and is the most common type of bone cancer in children and teens. Since metastatic recurrence has shared biological mechanism in many other cancer types, therapies that show promise in osteosarcoma can be developed in parallel for many other cancer types, such as breast, kidney and melanoma. Despite successful control of the primary osteosarcoma tumors and follow-up chemotherapy, metastasis continues to be the most common cause of mortality. The last 30 years have brought little improvement in survival outcomes for children with osteosarcoma, despite intensification of therapy. Due to lack of improved outcomes, new approaches to therapy are highly needed. Furthermore, if targeted therapeutics are found to prevent metastasis in this cancer, a strong biological rationale would exist for the evaluation of such a therapy in other human cancers.

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