Paola Videra and Nuno Priego Ramos, founders of CellmAbs, at the NOVA FCT laboratory, where the research began
A national biotech company has sold patents on a treatment that could revolutionize cancer treatment for “hundreds of millions of euros”. It will be up to German company BioNTech to develop clinical studies that could mean the technology could be used in patients within five years.
It's not an ordinary necklace that Paola Federa wears around her neck. Stuck in the silver thread, she holds not a medal, a heart, or a cross, but a symbol of a discovery that could revolutionize the fight against cancer. Apparently, the small figure represents a monoclonal antibody, a type of molecule made in a laboratory from living cells, which is used in some tumor treatments. In recent years, several monoclonal antibodies (mAb) have been developed, but none have the potential of the one that a researcher from the Applied Biomolecular Sciences Unit at NOVA FCT helped create that can eliminate 80% of solid tumors, regardless of About her place. platform. The discovery, developed by the Portuguese biotechnology company CellmAbs, was recognized by the German company BioNTech, which this month bought the patents related to this innovation, in a deal worth “hundreds of millions of euros” – the largest ever in the field of life. Science involving a national company.
The molecule with the “Portuguese signature” when introduced into the body has the ability to precisely target a very specific target: a biomarker present in the vast majority of solid tumors, whether primary or metastatic, and not found in healthy cells. . In this way, “it is possible to direct treatment exclusively at cancer cells, while sparing other cells,” in contrast to what happens in chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the 51-year-old researcher explains to Expresso. This biomarker, which plays an important role in tumor development and in suppressing the immune system of patients, has already been identified by science for several years, but it is such a small structure that until now all attempts have been made to develop monoclonal antibodies that can access it. He failed.
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