Sage Bionetworks, AZ Enter Cancer Pact

Sage Bionetworks and AstraZeneca have entered a collaboration to investigate certain cancers using advanced computational models of disease genetics. The goal is to better match patients with appropriate treatments that might also lead to new cancer therapeutics.

The partnership will leverage Sage Bionetworks’ expertise in computer models of disease genetics with AstraZeneca’s oncology expertise, including access to data on AstraZeneca’s compounds. The focus is to provide data-driven rationales for prioritizing therapeutic targets for developing new insights to improve cancer treatments, as well as potentially helping to identify cancer patient subpopulations that will most likely benefit from such treatments. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Dr. Jonathan Derry, vice president of research at Sage Bionetworks, said, “This is an exciting opportunity to combine what we have learned about complex genetic networks with the outstanding resources and scientists at AstraZeneca.”

Dr. Susan Galbraith, vice president and head of Oncology Innovative Medicines Unit at AZ, said, “We are looking forward to collaborating with Sage Bionetworks to build realistic, predictive models of cancers to expand our current understanding of these diseases and potentially harness that knowledge into new target identification, portfolio positioning and patient selection all of which we hope will lead to new treatment options for patients.”