Vivan Therapeutics and the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences Announces a Pioneering Partnership to Explore How Specific Cancer Mutations, Diabetes & Diet Influence Drug Response

Vivan Therapeutics and the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences Announces a Pioneering Partnership to Explore How Specific Cancer Mutations, Diabetes & Diet Influence Drug Response

London, UK [November 26, 2025]

Risk of specific cancers increases in patients with metabolic dysfunction including obesity and diabetes.  In an innovative collaboration, Vivan Therapeutics and the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences (LMS) have launched a cutting-edge research initiative to investigate how cancer-causing mutations in the Ras gene affect responses to chemotherapy and how diabetes & diet may further influence treatment response.

Mutations in the KRAS gene are among the most common genetic alterations in human cancers. These mutations alter how the Ras protein functions, driving cancer progression. While some of these mutations have been extensively studied, the role of most KRAS oncogenic variants remains unknown, and their full behaviour in living organisms remains poorly understood. Moreover, how these mutations are affected by diet is unknown.

To address this Vivan Therapeutics will work in partnership with LMS researchers to explore how different Ras mutations respond to cancer drugs, and whether metabolic conditions like obesity and diabetes alter those responses

Vivan Therapeutics is a London based biotech company known for creating personalised “fly avatars” of cancer patients for high-throughput drug screening. The company will contribute its unique automated in vivo screening platform, which enables rapid drug testing in hundreds of thousands of flies bearing human cancer mutations. This will allow the team to identify mutation-specific and pan-effective therapies while also uncovering how diabetes & diet impact treatment efficacy.

“Our approach represents a powerful convergence of fundamental science and translational innovation in oncology,” said Dr Nahuel Villegas, CSO at Vivan Therapeutics. “By using whole-animal models, we can assess how these mutations behave in real physiological contexts and generate clinically relevant insights at a fraction of the cost of traditional systems.”

“This collaboration builds on our team’s pioneering research, which began at Mount Sinai Medical Center, demonstrating the power of combinatorial drug approaches to treat diet-driven malignant tumours,” said Laura Towart, CEO of Vivan Therapeutics. “Vivan Therapeutics has long been a leader in personalized disease modelling and clinical decision support. Now, we’re taking personalization to the next level, delivering the world’s first tailored cancer treatment recommendations specifically designed for patients with Type 2 diabetes and obesity”

“This an exciting opportunity to collaborate with Vivan Therapeutics, who are at the forefront of fly-to-patient translation”, said Dr Helena Cochemé, lead researcher and Head of the Redox Metabolism group at the LMS. “Together, our research showcases the power of Drosophila as an in vivo pre-clinical model, that can capture the complexity of cancer and metabolic diseases, offering biomedical insight and therapeutic advances both at speed and at scale.”

This partnership is supported through the MRC’s Business Engagement Fund (BEF) and highlights the MRC’s commitment to strengthening ties between academia and UK biotech, fostering innovative strategies that accelerate translational research.

ENDS

About Vivan Therapeutics

Vivan Therapeutics is a London-based AI-powered precision oncology company using patient-specific disease models and machine learning to optimise cancer treatment. Its proprietary Personal Discovery Process (PDP) engineers a patient’s tumor mutations into fruit fly models, creating a living, functional representation of the disease. These “tumor avatars” are exposed to panels of over 2,000 single-agent and combination therapies to generate detailed response curves measuring efficacy, durability, and toxicity.

The resulting genotype-phenotype PDP dataset, combined with existing clinical data, powers TuMach, Vivan’s AI platform, which ranks therapies to guide clinicians toward the most effective, personalised treatment options. The same dataset also enables pharmaceutical partners to identify novel drug combinations and design better clinical trials.

By integrating advanced AI, high-throughput in vivo screening, and robust data analytics, Vivan Therapeutics accelerates personalised care for patients while transforming oncology drug discovery.

Oncologists and patients interested in Vivan's personalised cancer treatment recommendations should visit www.vivantx.com or email patientcare@vivantx.com.

Website: vivantx.com