Mesothelioma | Mesothelioma

diaDexus provided an exclusive license to CFD for its entire portfolio of therapeutic targets and associated monoclonal antibodies.

CFD's programs will leverage over eight years and more than $100 million of novel target discovery and antibody development efforts carried out at diaDexus.

Through its founding partnership with Incyte Genomics in 1997 and its own discovery program, diaDexus identified genes that are highly over-expressed in cancerous relative to normal tissue.

Starting from thousands of candidate genes, diaDexus identified approximately 20 promising candidates to move forward into pre-clinical development as therapeutic antibody targets.

"We have selected the best targets and monoclonal antibodies from our discovery efforts through great rigor and careful biology.

Several of our advanced targets appear to have significantly greater cancer and tissue specificity than well-known therapeutic targets such as HER-2 and EGF-R, the target antigens for Herceptin(R) and Erbitux(R)," said Jackie Papkoff, Chief Scientific Officer for CFD Therapeutics and formerly Executive Vice President of Discovery and Therapeutics at diaDexus.

"We believe this higher specificity of target expression could enable the generation of therapeutic antibodies with enhanced clinical safety and efficacy.

We are hopeful our products might one day p...

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