Berkeley's Oncologic and Triton BioSystems merge

Berkeley's Oncologic has merged with Triton BioSystems to form a new company namedAduro BioTech, the companies announced Monday.
The new company will be based at Oncologic's Berkeley office.
The new company will work to develop minimally invasive cancertherapies that use iron oxide nono-particles to target and killtumors. The particles are engineered to generate high levels ofheat when exposed to an externally applied magnetic field. The heatthen kills the tumor cells without the toxicity and other damagecaused by chemotherapy.
"There are several exciting aspects of the Aduro technologythat we believe can offer significant improvements to currenttherapies," Stephen T. Isaacs, CEO of Aduro, said in theannouncement. "We are developing a cancer therapy based on thelow toxicity of iron oxide, which is an innocuous materialcurrently used in a variety of medical applications. Ifsuccessfully developed, the Aduro products will be an exceedinglyimportant addition to the field of solid tumor cancertherapy."