A Massachusetts company with strong Utah ties is approaching the finding and fixing of cancerous tumors as an engineering challenge. It believes most solid tumors are triggered by one or more of six distinct systemic signaling-mechanism breakdowns and it's developing treatments to repair them.

Merrimack Pharmaceuticals of Cambridge, Mass., on Thursday announced a $530 million exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with French pharmaceutical giant sanofi-aventis for the development and co-commercialization of a drug targeting the first of those signaling breakdowns.

Developing drugs to treat diseases including cancer often involves throwing every compound you can think of at it to see what elicits the response you want, says Utahn Gary Crocker, chairman of Merrimack Pharmaceuticals and president of Utah's Crocker Ventures LLC. But with new technologies that make it easier to look inside cells and see how they "cross talk," Merrimack decided to view cancer as an engineering problem with an engineered solution. Merrimack uses network biology, which is a combination of computer modeling and efficient analysis of cell signaling networks.

Once you identify the breakdown in the signaling mechanism, it's possible to engineer a diagnostic test and a fix, he told the Deseret News.

The company has confirmed five critical signaling networks where a breakdown can trigger cancer in different organ tissues. A sixth has been found but not yet confirmed, he said. Merrimack estimates the identified mechanical breakdowns are linked to at least 90 percent of solid tumors. That means the same problem may have occurred in a case of breast cancer and of prostate cancer although distinctly different organs are involved. And the treatment may be the same in both cases, too — a dramatic departure from a traditional chemotherapeutic approach.

"The goal is not to just kill cancer cells, but to actually fix the engineering breakdown that created the cancer," Crocker said.

Merrimack is in early clinical trials with compounds that target some of the identified mechanism breakdowns. It's a process being watched closely in Utah, as Beehive State investors hold about 10 percent of the company's shares, including Crocker, a successful Utah businessman.

Additionally, Merrimack plans to move some of its research to the University of Utah College of Science, which has one of the nation's top math biology programs. And the phase 2 clinical trials are likely to include Huntsman Cancer Institute, Crocker said.

Under the agreement, sanofi-aventis will pay $60 million cash and will cover all the development costs. The rest of the funding will be paid in chunks as various regulatory and sales milestones are met, said Kathleen Petrozzelli, Merrimack associate director of corporate communications. The company retains the right to co-promote the drug in the United States. The agreement covers only the drug MM-121, a first of its kind, fully human monoclonal antibody that blocks signaling at one of the identified breakdown sites. Once phase 2 "proof of concept" is established, sanofi-aventis will take over development.

The agreement still has to clear antitrust and regulatory reviews.

e-mail: lois@desnews.com