Benzinga | Sep 13, 2021 08:07AM EDT

Tempest Enters Into Exclusive License Agreement With The University Of California For Novel Cancer Target

Tempest Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:TPST), a clinical-stage oncology company developing potentially first-in-class therapeutics that combine both targeted and immune-mediated mechanisms, today announced that it has entered into an exclusive license with the University of California at Berkeley for intellectual property covering a drug target that was discovered in the laboratory of Russell Vance, Ph.D., professor of molecular and cell biology at U.C. Berkeley and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. The company also announced Dr. Vance's appointment to its advisory board.

"We are delighted that Dr. Vance is joining our advisory board and for the opportunity to develop the exciting technology from his laboratory in our pursuit of improved treatments for patients with cancer," said Tom Dubensky, president of Tempest. "Dr. Vance has discovered what we believe is a new approach to target a scientifically-validated pathway that has been challenging to effectively drug."

The target is a component of a newly defined pathway that controls the production of a cytokine that tumors can evolve to block to avoid immune recognition and promote metastasis. Interestingly, the target is a suppressor protein, so is predictably not inactivated by progressing tumors and therefore should remain a target for drug inactivation.

Dr. Vance joins a distinguished advisory board at Tempest comprising experts whose experience spans elucidating new therapeutic pathways, discovering druggable targets and developing drugs to treat cancer patients. The advisory board at Tempest also includes:

Toni Choueiri, M.D. - Director of the Lank Center for Genitourinary (GU) Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DCFI) and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School

Benjamin Cravatt, Ph.D. -- Professor and the Gilula Chair of Chemical Biology in the Department of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute

Raymond DuBois, M.D., Ph.D. -- Dean of the College of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina and a Distinguished Professor and Director of the Hollings Cancer Center

Jason Luke, M.D. -- Director of the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center (HCC) -- Cancer Immunotherapeutics Center and an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh

Drew Pardoll, M.D. -- an Abeloff Professor of Oncology, Medicine, Pathology and Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine, and the Director of the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and Director of the Cancer Immunology Program at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University

Peppi Prasit, Ph.D. -- previously served as a Director at Tempest Therapeutics and the CEO of Inception Sciences. Dr. Prasit has over 20 years of experience at Merck Frosst Canada and Merck San Diego where he played a pivotal role in the discovery of multiple marketed drugs