FOSTER CITY, Calif., Jan. 22, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Notable Labs, a startup that accelerates drug development by matching drugs with patients who are most likely to respond, announced today that it has launched its first drug development program, ND-1000, which targets pediatric and adult blood cancers. In an industry first, the company has opted to donate the commercial rights to price, manufacture, and distribute ND-1000 for pediatric leukemia to global repurposing non-profit Cures Within Reach in order to provide the drug to pediatric leukemia patients at a very low cost.
The partnership between Notable and Cures Within Reach is intended to further Cures Within Reach’s mission to develop and implement effective economic incentives for the repurposing of inexpensive generic drugs, devices, and other products which is especially critical in rare diseases. This collaborative venture will be supported by philanthropy from individuals, foundations and disease non-profits, as well as investment from for-profit stakeholders.
As a for-profit company, Notable Labs is able to donate ND-1000’s pediatric commercial rights to Cures Within Reach due to the drug’s eligibility for the FDA’s Pediatric Priority Review Voucher Program, which has a financial value due to an awarded voucher’s ability to be sold to another pharmaceutical company.
“We need to create and use incentives to secure approval for existing drugs that have additional therapeutic value,” said Dr. Bruce Bloom, CEO, Cures Within Reach. “To our knowledge, this would be a unique therapeutic development partnership that creates both commercial value for shareholders and philanthropic impact at a significantly lower development cost. Our hope is that this type of alliance between a for-profit company and a non-profit organization to repurpose drugs and improve outcomes at lower costs to patients could become a model for others to use.”
Notable Labs will open the first clinical trial for ND-1000 at The University of Kansas Cancer Center later this year through a partnership with the University’s Institute for Advancing Medical Innovation (IAMI). “We are thrilled to bring our drug repurposing and blood cancer clinical trial expertise to the unique partnership established by Notable Labs and Cures Within Reach,” said IAMI Director Scott Weir, Pharm.D., Ph.D. “We are focused on bringing life-saving cancer treatments to patients and we are eager to enroll trial participants into the first clinical trial for ND-1000, joining this groundbreaking effort.”
How Notable Labs works
Notable Labs has built an automated laboratory that rapidly evaluates thousands of drug combinations on cancer cells relative to healthy cells. A report is generated which prioritizes the drugs that are most specifically active against cancer cells. The first validation trials have been in blood cancers due to the accessibility and large number of cancer cells available.
The company was founded by Matt De Silva, whose father was diagnosed with Glioblastoma Multiforme, a deadly stage 4 brain cancer that claimed the lives of Beau Biden, John McCain, and Ted Kennedy. A hedge fund manager by background, Matt spent more than a year researching potential treatments and clinical trials, and realized that the physicians running the trials didn’t have the ability to accurately predict which medications would be most effective for his father. Unfortunately, cancer doesn’t wait, and Matt lost his father before he could find the right treatment. During that time Matt founded Notable Labs and built a platform that could solve the problem for other patients that he couldn’t for his own father.
“Our goal is to ensure that if a patient chooses to enroll on a clinical trial, they’ll have a strong chance of responding. If we can quickly and accurately match the right drugs with the right patients, the cost of clinical trials will drastically fall, enabling reduced drug prices that our healthcare system desperately needs,” said De Silva, CEO and Founder of Notable Labs. “The work we do in our lab and this partnership with Cures Within Reach and the KU Cancer Center will ensure that more families and patients will have access to this therapy in the future.”
About Cures Within Reach
Cures Within Reach (CWR) is a US-based global philanthropic leader that improves patient quality and length of life by leveraging the speed, safety and cost-effectiveness of medical repurposing research, driving more treatments to more patients more quickly. CWR catalyzes research to facilitate and validate repurposing opportunities that create clinical impact, and enables and facilitates conversation and action among stakeholders that help transform healthcare through repurposing opportunities. Through repurposing, CWR drives both market impact and health savings to patients and patient groups, from academia/researchers, with payers and the healthcare industry and with support from the government, philanthropy and others. CWR's repurposing research projects have generated "new" treatments in over a dozen indications, making patient impact through off-label use in clinical practice or through a commercialization track.
CWR currently has a global portfolio of more than 20 repurposing research projects, as well as more than 180 repurposing research projects available for funding in a wide range of diseases on its CureAccelerator® site. Visit cureswithinreach.org or follow CWR via Twitter @CuresWReach, LinkedIn (LinkedIn.com/company/cures-within-reach), YouTube (YouTube.com/cureswithinreach) or Facebook (Facebook.com/CuresWithinReach).
About Notable Labs
Notable Labs is accelerating the process of determining which drugs or combinations are most likely to be effective for groups of blood cancer patients. While most drug companies look to address the largest possible group of patients, Notable looks first for groups with unmet needs and can accurately predict which drugs or drug combinations are likely to have a high success rate there. Notable will introduce its first drugs in 2019. Learn more at https://notablelabs.com/ or follow Notable via Twitter @notablelabs.
Contact:
Kerry Metzdorf
978-609-0766
kerry@big-swing.com