Benzinga | Jul 13, 2021 08:06AM EDT

Palisade Bio Says Enters Into Worldwide In-Licensing Agreement With University Of California For Technology To Support Target Identification, Drug Discovery And Clinical Development

Palisade Bio, Inc. (NASDAQ:PALI) a late-stage biopharma company advancing therapies for acute and chronic gastrointestinal (GI) complications, today announced that it entered into an exclusive license with the Regents of the University of California, expanding its proprietary technology for detecting enzymatic protease activity in human clinical samples. Under the terms of this agreement, in combination with a related 2020 license from UC, the Company receives a worldwide exclusive license to patent rights covering certain engineered substrates and their use in measuring degradative enzymes for disease conditions, including cancer. This technology was originally developed in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Heller at University of California San Diego.



"Many chronic endocrine and inflammatory diseases are associated with chronic proteolytic enzyme leak from the GI tract. We have a deep understanding of the protease biology of the GI tract, and with the license we are expanding our proprietary whole-blood assay to identify the specific protease activity contributing to these diseases. As we expand our pipeline of drug products, these assets form a platform for novel target and drug discovery, as well as highly efficient patient selection and measurement of clinical response during drug development," said Tom Hallam, Ph.D., CEO of Palisade Bio.