Monopar Therapeutics Inc. announced a collaboration with the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) to evaluate radiopharmaceutical versions of MNPR-101 in several aggressive cancers. MNPR-101 is a novel, first-in-class humanized monoclonal antibody to the urokinase Plasminogen Activator Receptor (uPAR). Dr. Anand Jeyasekharan, MBBS MRCP (UK) PhD, of CSI Singapore, NUS, will be the Principal Investigator on the collaboration.

Dr. Jeyasekharan is a physician-scientist who runs a research laboratory investigating the molecular and biological responses of cancer cells to oncology drugs, as well as treats cancer patients and leads early phase oncology clinical trials at NUS. In this collaboration, Dr. Jeyasekharan will initially investigate uPAR expression levels in tissue samples from patients with various subtypes of advanced soft tissue sarcoma (ASTS). Studies have shown uPAR to be a promising target for ASTS, which is a cancer Dr. Jeyasekharan specializes in treating.

He plans to assess retrospective patient samples to identify which subtypes of ASTS have the highest expression of uPAR, thus making them the most promising to pursue in a human clinical trial.