{"id":28651,"date":"2016-03-23T12:33:14","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T16:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=28651"},"modified":"2016-05-23T18:29:20","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T22:29:20","slug":"new-biotech-begins-work-on-enhanced-platinum-cancer-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/?p=28651","title":{"rendered":"New Biotech Begins Work on Enhanced Platinum Cancer Drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chemotherapy<\/a>
(National Cancer Institute)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

23 March 2016. A new biotechnology company began work today on developing improved platinum-based treatments for solid tumor cancers. The company, Placon Therapeutics<\/a> in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a spin-off enterprise from Tarveda Therapeutics<\/a>, a developer of biologic cancer drugs.<\/p>\n

Placon Therapeutics focuses on new treatments for cancer using platinum as a cancer-killing agent that works by damaging the tumor cells’ DNA and preventing the cells from replicating. These drugs are part of many chemotherapies<\/a> prescribed today for lung, bladder, cervical, ovarian, and testicular cancer. However, tumors can become resistant<\/a> to current drugs with platinum, and the drugs cause serious side effects<\/a> in some people, including kidney toxicity and low red- and white-blood cell counts.<\/p>\n

The company is building on research by MIT professor chemistry Stephen Lippard<\/a>, a scientific founder of Placon, making it possible to improve the efficacy of platinum-based drugs by increasing the amount of platinum absorbed by tumors and the length of time it remains active.\u00a0 Placon’s lead product, code-named BTP-114<\/a>, is designed to combine with the blood serum protein albumin<\/a> to deliver these effects.<\/p>\n

In a study presented at an American Association for Cancer Research<\/a> meeting in April 2015, BTP-114 was given to lab animals with grafted lung and ovarian cancer. Among recipients of BTP-114 with favorable genomic profiles, tumors reported as much as a 13-fold increase in platinum uptake compared to the cisplatin, a conventional chemotherapy drug made with platinum.<\/p>\n

Placon Therapeutics reports as well that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration accepted the company’s investigational new drug application<\/a>, which clears the way to begin clinical trials of BTP-114. The company plans to test the drug among patients with solid tumor cancers that resist conventional treatments, and is seeking partners or investors for these trials.<\/p>\n

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