Prestige Biopharma said on Friday that it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Imagion Biosystems, a U.S. imaging diagnostics company, to develop an early diagnosis platform for pancreatic cancer. 

Under the partnership, Prestige Biopharma will provide pancreatic adenocarcinoma up-regulated factor (PAUF)-based antibodies to Imagion to co-develop a platform for early detection of pancreatic cancer utilizing nanoimaging discovery technology. 

Prestige Biopharma’s PAUF-based pancreatic cancer antibody, PBP1510, will be combined with Imagion's MagSense technology. This involves injecting biostable nanoparticles into cancer patients for safe cancer diagnosis together with imaging equipment. 

Imagion, headquartered in San Diego, develops innovative medical imaging diagnostic technologies based on bio-safe nanoparticles for the diagnosis of various cancer types. 

In particular, the Biden administration's Cancer Moonshot project, which Prestige Biopharma recently joined, is also showing great interest in pancreatic cancer diagnosis technology based on PAUF protein factors. 

Pancreatic cancer, also known as the "silent cancer," is frequently diagnosed at stage 4 in eight out of 10 patients, and there is no reliable early diagnosis method available. Even the conventional tumor marker CA19-9 can not effectively detect pancreatic cancer, requiring full-body MRI or CT scans to accurately check the entire pancreas.

Prestige Biopharma aims to change this diagnostic lansdcape.

"The development of a platform leading to early diagnosis using imaging diagnostics and diagnostic kits together with our new antibody PBP1510 aligns with our goals to create a pancreatic cancer treatment ecosystem to increase the survival rate of pancreatic cancer patients ," said Prestige Biopharma CEO Park So-yeon.