Leiden and Utrecht, The Netherlands; 30 January 2017 – OcellO BV announced today that it has entered into a licensing agreement with Hubrecht Organoid Technology (HUB) for use of Organoid Technology for cystic fibrosis and gastrointestinal diseases, including colon cancer. OcellO will add these organoid assays to its drug discovery services portfolio.

Organoids are mini-organs grown in cell culture from biopsies taken from patients and faithfully recapitulate the genetic and phenotypic characteristics of diseased tissues.  Organoids have proven to be valuable disease models for the high-throughput screening and validation of innovative medicines, bypassing limitations associated with cell-line- and xenograft-based preclinical drug studies.

Leo Price, CEO of OcellO, said: “HUB Organoid Technology represent the state-of-the-art for in vitro modelling of drug responses and is expected to form a spearhead in OcellO’s service offering. This licensing agreement is the culmination of a highly successful 3 year EU-funded collaboration (FP7-SUPPRESstem) to develop panels of organoid assays for colon cancer drug discovery and we are delighted to be able to offer these and other organoid assays to our customers.”

Marcel Zwaal, CEO of HUB: “We connect with companies that are able to offer high value added services to our Organoid Technology and with OcellO we have been fortunate to add an expert partner in this field”.

About the HUB

Hubrecht Organoid Technology (HUB) is an organization founded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and the University Medical Center Utrecht. HUB exploits the pioneering work of Prof. Hans Clevers, who discovered methods to grow stem cell-derived human ‘mini-organs’ (HUB Organoids) from tissues of patients with various diseases.  The organoids, that are part of the HUB biobanks, are characterized by genome sequencing, expression profiling and sensitivity to known and experimental drugs to establish a database linking genetic and transcriptional information to drug responsiveness.  HUB offers licenses to its patented HUB Organoid Technology for drug-screening and access to organoids in the HUB biobanks for preclinical drug discovery and validation.  In addition, HUB is performing clinical studies to validate the technologies use as a companion diagnostic. More info at www.hub4organoids.eu

About OcellO

OcellO is a CRO that offers drug screening and profiling services using 3D cell culture models of disease. OcellO uses high-content 3D imaging and analysis to measure drug effects, extracting clinically relevant information on compound effects. OcellO has developed a broad range of models for testing potential therapies to treat polycystic kidney disease, neurodegenerative disorders and, in particular, cancer.  OcellO’s current 3D cancer models are developed from cell lines, patient derived xenograft tumours and patient tumour material, and include panels of lung, pancreas, breast, colon and gastric cancers.

CONTACT

Leo Price (CEO)

Phone: +31 71 3322 875

Email: leo.price@ocellO.nl

www.OcellO.nl

HUB

Robert Vries (COO)

Tel: +31 88 1236 301

r.vries@hub4organoids.nl

November 22, 2016 – Leiden, The Netherlands and Freiburg, Germany

Driven forward by the top ranking 2016 Eurostars program (value 1.5 mln euro) in both Germany and The Netherlands, OcellO and Charles River Laboratories launch their strategic partnership to provide unique integrated in vitro and in vivo oncology services using the Charles River collection of PDX tumour models. OcellO will use human tumour material from Charles River PDX models and apply these in their 3D cell culture drug screening platform. This high throughput platform enables the growth of micro-tumours in a natural extracellular matrix environment and uses automated 3D imaging to analyse the effects of small molecules and antibodies on tumour development. This approach will enable the screening of lead molecules in panels of PDX tumours in vitro, identifying the optimum tumour models for subsequent in vivo studies. The first series of in vitro PDX assays will be launched at the 28th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics taking place in Munich on 29^th November.

PDX models utilise patient tumour material and are the gold standard for in vivo oncology drug testing.  However, conventional in vitro methods using 2D monolayer cultures of transformed cell lines fail to adequately predict compound effects in vivo; due to serial passaging and selection, cell lines deviate from the original patient tumour. Furthermore, monolayer cultures fail to recapitulate the in vivo tumour architecture and tumour cell biology.  The companion in vitro-in vivo PDX models offered by OcellO and Charles River overcome these problems. Using the same tumour material in vitro and in vivo enables a uniquely high translation between these models. This will reduce timelines, compound use and increase success rates in vivo.

Leo Price, CEO and founder of OcellO, commented: “The collaboration with Charles River to align in vitro and in vivo testing makes complete sense; using Charles River’s human tumour material in OcellO’s platform allows us to provide the most clinically relevant biology for in vitro testing to our customers and the direct translation to in vivo models represents an effective pipeline for early drug discovery. We are delighted to enter into this strategic partnership and expect that it will enable both companies to strengthen their position in the CRO oncology field.

“We are excited to combine OcellO’s 3D culture and imaging technology and Charles River’s patient derived xenograft (PDX) models,” said Aidan Synnott, Oncology Site Director for Charles River Laboratories. “This partnership will allow us to provide a more robust early discovery offering for our oncology clients. Our goal is to improve translational results for our clients, which will ultimately increase positive outcomes for patients.”

Charles River Laboratories provides essential products and services to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, government agencies and leading academic institutions around the globe accelerate their research and drug development efforts. In November 2015, Charles River announced the acquisition of Oncotest GmbH. With Oncotest, Charles River is able to leverage an extensive collection of more than 400 patient-derived xenograft (PDX) tumor models, as well as a full range of in vitro assays using both commercially available and proprietary PDX-derived cell lines.

OcellO is a CRO that offers drug screening and profiling services using 3D cell culture models of cancers and other diseases. OcellO uses high-content 3D imaging and analysis to measure drug effects, extracting clinically relevant information on compound effects.

For more information:

Leo Price, CEO

Phone: +31 71 3322 875

Email: leo.price@ocellO.nl

www.OcellO.nl

For more info on the Charles River Laboratories PDX collection visit the CR website here or contact holly.collette@crl.com