Thestra Ltd. and Auria Biobank have signed an agreement to enable the use of Biobank’s material for Thestra’s R&D purposes. This intensifies cooperation between Thestra and Auria Biobank and thus paves the way for further development of Thestra´s operations.
Auria Biobank and the researchers of the University of Turku and the Turku University Central Hospital have a long history of collaboration which has been pivotal in establishing cancer diagnostics company Thestra. With this new agreement Thestra will take the next step in developing a unique solution for diagnosis of aggressively metastasizing head and neck cancer (HNSCC). The agreement will enable sample material and data transfer between Auria Biobank and Thestra for development use in accordance with the research plan. Thestra is grateful and very much looking forward to this cooperation with Auria Biobank.
About
Auria Biobank is Finland’s oldest hospital biobank, established in 2012. Over a million samples are stored in the biobank and used for biomedical research. Auria Biobank is the first Finnish biobank (B001) accredited by FINAS (The Finnish Accreditation Service). Auria Biobank cooperates closely with other Finnish and European biobanks through the Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure (BBMRI) Network. Network´s purpose is to promote and implement collaboration between Finnish biobanks and research projects that collect clinical samples and to link such collaboration with the European biobank network.
Thestra is a cancer diagnostics spin-out company from the University of Turku based on the long-term cooperation between the researchers of the University of Turku and the Turku University Central Hospital together with the Auria Biobank. Thestra develops a product that could be used to identify head and neck cancer patients whose disease could be cured with treatments that cause fewer side effects. Head and neck cancer (HNSCC) is the sixth most common cancer and is annually diagnosed in approximately 1 million new patients globally. The product developed by Thestra, EPLINEX™, offers a unique diagnostic solution for head and neck cancer patients, which could be used to identify the aggressiveness of head and neck cancer in the early stage of the disease.
The basic research on which EPLINEx™ is based has been supported by funding from the Academy of Finland and the Erkko Foundation, and the technology has been further refined before the company was founded with Business Finland’s” Research-to-Business” (R2B) funding.
