Cytopia has announced significant progress by Cancer Therapeutics CRC (CTx) towards the identification of a pre-clinical drug candidate. This candidate is based on intellectual property licensed from the former.
In May 2008, the companies entered into an agreement whereby 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.
The agreement between the two parties has been structured to allow Cytopia to take up exclusive commercialization rights for any drug candidate or share with CTx any partnering revenues and royalties for a candidate commercialized by the latter.
The latter'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 optimization phase of drug discovery.
Key achievements of CTx include:
• Establishment of a multi-disciplinary team of scientists;
• Rapid development of three distinct chemical lead series;
• Determination of the 3D structure of the FAK protein by crystallography with lead structures bound to the protein; and
• Progression of one lead series to the lead optimization phase, with backup series identified.
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