Cytopia cancer program reaches important milestone at Cancer Therapeutics CRC
Cytopia Limited announced significant progress by Cancer Therapeutics CRC Pty Ltd (CTx) towards the identification of a pre-clinical drug candidate. This candidate is based on intellectual property licensed from Cytopia to CTx.
In May 2008, Cytopia and CTx entered into an agreement where CTx would develop a series of chemical leads discovered by Cytopia against an unnamed cancer target. This target has now been confirmed as the enzyme Focal Adhesion Kinase (FAK), a protein involved in many cancers.
FAK is thought to play an important role in the growth, invasion, and spread of solid tumours. The development of inhibitors of FAK is now the focus of research in a number of pharmaceutical and biotech companies worldwide.
The agreement between the two parties has been structured to allow Cytopia to take up exclusive commercialisation rights for any drug candidate or share with CTx any partnering revenues and royalties for a candidate commercialised by CTx.
CTx’s Scientific Management Group has reviewed the achievements of its research team over the past year and has promoted the project into the final lead optimisation phase of drug discovery. Achievement of this milestone means additional CTx staffing and resources will now be made available to further develop the chemical lead series originally supplied by Cytopia.
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