Orion Genomics teams on cancer

January 20, 2006

By Rachel Melcer
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

Orion Genomics LLC, which is pioneering a method for early cancer detection and improved treatment, said Thursday it has partnered with a leading research team at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

Orion, based at the Center for Emerging Technologies incubator in midtown, said the joint project will focus on cancers of the lung, breast and ovaries.

Professor Robert Brown, of the University of Glasgow, has developed techniques that improved the way ovarian cancer is treated, said Howard McLeod, professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine and an adviser to Orion.

Brown's methods are based on gathering molecular data about tumors and translating that information into useful techniques.

His collaboration with Orion "is pretty important. It is, in some ways, a validation of their technology that an international leader in this important area is willing to work with them," McLeod said.

Brown's knowledge is important to Orion, said Chief Executive Nathan Lakey. Of equal significance is the professor's carefully preserved and annotated collection of thousands of tissue samples from cancer patients.

Orion will use its proprietary technology to survey and compare these samples, searching for biomarkers that indicate how a particular type of tumor responds to various chemotherapies. If it is able to find such patterns, Orion will develop tests that can be used to determine which drugs should be administered for best results in individuals, Lakey said.

The company also believes it can identify tumor DNA and develop diagnostic tests that will show if even a tiny amount is present in a patient's blood. This would lead to early detection of cancer, when it is most treatable.

Researchers from the university and the company jointly will analyze data and publish any resulting discoveries, Lakey said. Orion would have the right to commercialize them.

"This collaboration greatly enhances our chances of success," Lakey said. The company hopes to have its first test on the market in 2008.

Orion was founded in 1998 as an agricultural biotech company, and it maintains a division that sells products and services for mapping the genes of plants. That unit has made more than $20 million in sales since its first product hit the market in 2001, Lakey said.

Its technology also can detect chemical changes in human genes, called epigenetic DNA methylation, which Orion refers to as the "second code" of life. This ability is the basis of Orion's cancer work.

Scientists around the globe are discovering ways in which these changes factor into human health. A group of 40 leading cancer scientists recently called for a large-scale, international "human epigenome project" to map them.

"DNA methylation-based diagnostics have the potential to substantially change the way physicians first diagnose and later treat cancer patients," Brown said. Orion's technology is "at the world forefront for methylation analysis, (which) may prove to be extremely powerful."