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Ascenion Mediates Licence Agreement between medac and MHH for New Diagnostic Test in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL)

March 26, 2009 Munich, Germany – Hanover Medical School (MHH) and medac GmbH have closed a licence agreement providing the company with exclusive worldwide rights to a diagnostic test that can help guide ALL treatment. The deal was initiated and negotiated by Ascenion GmbH, the MHH’s exclusive partner for IP asset management.

ALL is the most common type of cancer in children. But the disease also affects adults, especially those aged 65 and older. Standard therapy involves multiple phases of chemotherapy and radiation applied over a period of 2 to 3 years. An essential component is the targeted treatment of the central nervous system (CNS). Without this, about 50% of patients will experience a relapse.

Available diagnostic techniques, however, identify only about 3-5% of ALL patients as being CNS positive.

“The new MHH method allows a more precise assessment of CNS involvement,” inventor Martin Stanulla comments. “Based on this, physicians will for the first time be able to adapt the intensity of CNS-targeted therapy to the risk profiles of individual patients. This is an enormous advantage because CNS-targeted treatment has severe side effects. It is considered neurotoxic, and cranial irradiation may eventually even lead to brain tumours.”

Whereas traditional diagnosis of CNS involvement is based on the morphological evaluation of cerebrospinal fluid, the new test detects mRNA expression of the cytokine IL-15 in leukemic bone marrow using PCR techniques. Results from intense research into this field at the MHH confirm IL-15 as valuable marker for assessing CNS involvement and suggest that the cytokine plays an important role in the migration of leukaemic cells into the CNS.

“These findings provide a valuable opportunity for the treatment of patients with ALL,” Christian Stein, CEO of Ascenion comments. “We are glad to have attracted medac as licensee. With its strong track record in cancer treatment and diagnostics, the company is an ideal partner to develop a diagnostic kit and make it broadly available to physicians and ALL patients.”

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About medac
medac is a pharmaceutical company which has specialised in the treatment of malignant and autoimmune diseases. Many years of experience have made the company one of the leading manufacturers of oncology products as well as rheumatology products in Germany and in international markets. medac also offers new and well proven therapeutic options in the fields of urology, and fibrinolysis. Moreover, medac is one of the few companies engaged also in the field of diagnostics.
Beside special diagnostics for detection of infectious diseases, medac combines therapeutic and diagnostic tools to establish highest efficacy of the treatment procedures.

About Hanover Medical School (MHH)
Hanover Medical School (MHH), founded in 1965, is one of Germany's leading universities in research, patient care and teaching. With its concentrated support of specialised research areas, it has become one of the best university clinics in the country. The outstanding research conducted at Germany's only institution of higher education exclusively devoted to medicine has been clearly recognised within the framework of the Excellence Initiative supported by the federal and state governments. As the best university clinic in the country, MHH will receive more than 40 million euros funding by 2011. Further information at www.mh-hannover.de