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CPDR's ERG Antibody Leads to Successful Opportunities
February 14, 2011
The Center for Prostate Disease Research (CPDR) and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) - with the Henry M. Jackson Foundation (HJF) for the Advancement in Military Medicine - are excited to announce a licensing agreement with Biocare Medical for the exclusive worldwide sales and distribution of the anti-ERG monoclonal antibody (ERG-MAb).
This antibody has potential to be used for in vitro diagnostics, prognostics, patient monitoring, and screening by immunohistochemistry. The CPDR-USUHS collaborative research endeavor also involves investigators from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and Biocare Medical to further study the ERG-MAb and its clinical diagnostic potential.
"The development of the ERG-MAb reflects CPDR's continued commitment to support highly synergistic interdisciplinary interactions that are critical in quickly translating promising basic science discoveries to benefit patients," said Shiv Srivastava, Ph.D., Co-Director of CPDR. "For more than five years, CPDR investigators have maintained an unwavering focus on this cancer gene defect that is present in more than half of all prostate cancer patients."
The mouse ERG-MAb (Furusato, et al. Prostate Cancer Prostatic Dis. 2010; 13:228-237) was developed at CPDR, which is a multidisciplinary translational research program that is part of the USUHS Department of Surgery. What Furusato and colleagues at CPDR have shown with the mouse ERG-MAb is that they are able to identify the presence of the ERG oncoprotein with close to 100% accuracy in the prostatic tissue of men who have prostate cancer. Androgen-dependent oncogenic activation of the ERG oncoprotein as a result of gene fusions has been identified as a potentially causal alteration in 50%-70% of patients with prostate cancer. The CPDR ERG-MAb can detect the presence of ERG oncoprotein with an unprecedented specificity – 99.9% – in prostate tumor cells. In addition, there appears to be no sign of ERG oncoprotein in the benign epithelial cells of men who do not have prostate cancer. There is also a 97% correlation between the presence of ERG-positive prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN) and ERG-positive carcinoma.
Shyh-Han Tan, Ph.D., has been with CPDR since 2007 and is the Co-Inventor of the ERG-MAb. "The CPDR ERG-MAb undoubtedly is a highly promising monoclonal antibody which is not only highly specific but has been proven to be able to distinguish ERG from other ETS proteins such as FLI1," he said. "For example, the CPDR ERG-MAb will help pathologist to correctly distinguish ERG from FLI1 in a cellular environment where FLI1 is also likely to be expressed, such as in prostate tissue infiltrated by lymphocytes or prostate cancer metastasis in lymph nodes."
The ERG-MAb also has the potential to detect endothelial-cell-derived tumors and to evaluate ERG alterations in acute myelogenous leukemia, Ewing sarcoma, Kaposi sarcoma, angiosarcoma, epithelioid hemangioendothelioma, and endothelial components of hemangiomas.
"In addition to these imminent advancements, the CPDR ERG-MAb opens the avenues for ERG-based stratification of prostate tumors for ERG oncogenic pathway-targeted therapy in more than half of prostate cancers, which is similar to oncogene-targeted therapies - HER2, EGFR, BCR-ABL, PDGFR -currently being used in other cancers," said Albert Dobi, Ph.D., Co-Inventor.
The CPDR mission is fulfilled primarily through its three principal programs – the Clinical Research Center, the Basic Science Research Program and the National Multicenter Prostate Cancer Database– and through a robust education and training program that operates out of its Headquarters location, the Clinical Research Center, and the original laboratories at USUHS. CPDR is also committed to patient outreach, primarily through its affiliation with the WRAMC US TOO! organization and through a heavy schedule of health fairs in which it participates.
