Saladax Biomedical Licenses Antibodies to Arup Labs

Arup Laboratories (Salt Lake City, UT, USA) and Saladax Biomedical, Inc. (SBI, Bethlehem PA, USA), have entered into a multi-year licensing agreement for SBI antibodies and other raw materials that will enable Arup to develop a specialized test for measuring serum concentrations of the cancer chemotherapeutic busulfan. Under the terms of the agreement, Arup will advance SBI an undisclosed licensing fee, with additional payments for the supply of SBI materials.

Saladax will supply Arup with the critical raw materials required to develop and validate a microtiter plate assay to measure the concentrations of busulfan in the bloodstream of patients undergoing allogeneic hematopoeitic stem cell transplant (HSCT) for chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). Arup will develop a busulfan blood-level monitoring test based upon antibodies rather than physical methods such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The busulfan test to be offered by Arup will enable more timely and cost-effective management of busulfan dosing. Current testing methods require long lead times, often yielding results too late to adjust the busulfan dose.

Annually, over 60,000 hematopoeitic stem cell transplants are performed worldwide, with approximately 30% performed in the United States. Busulfan is commonly used in the preparative regimen prior to hematopoeitic stem cell transplants. The drug can be quite toxic, particularly in pediatric patients, for whom dose management by blood-level monitoring is recommended. "Today testing is so labor-intensive that in many cases, results are obtained by oncologists too late in their patients' therapy to adjust dosing to the optimal therapeutic range. Saladax's antibodies will enable Arup to offer a timely result without sacrificing accuracy, thus providing higher clinical utility,” said Arup's president and Chief Operating Officer Ronald L. Weiss, M.D., M.B.A.



Related Links:
Arup Laboratories
Saladax Biomedical