Australian biotech firm Bionomics is going to a Stage II Clinical Trial with its anti-cancer chemotherapy drug, currently titled BNC105. It will be tested on 60 mesothelioma patients in Australia, while a concurrent trial is conducted in the United States in association with the Hoosier Medical Group.
Bionomics chief executive Dr Deborah Rathjen said on Wednesday that the trial would be one of few trials next year involving a drug targeting mesothelioma. The drug utilizes a new biochemical approach to attacking tumors proving in Phase I to be effective in animal subjects with “head and neck, brain, prostate, breast, colon and lung and showed that in contrast to many of the current chemotherapeutic drugs, BNC105 is not susceptible to common mechanisms of cancer resistance.”
Mesothelioma is a form of cancer usually caused by asbestos exposure and attacks the protective lining that covers most of the body’s internal organs. Bionomics says BCN105 can extend the life of people suffering from mesothelioma and provide them with a better quality of life. The company is also frank about its hopes for the drug with much more common forms of cancer; concurrent with the mesothelioma tests they will be testing its efficacy with renal cancer.
BNC105 also proved to be an effective agent when used for mesothelioma treatment in conjunction with radiotherapy. Combining intensive radiotherapy on mesothelioma tumors in conjunction with chemotherapy focused on the same cells has had some positive results. BNC105 also showed value when used in conjunction with cisplatin, the most common chemotherapy drug used for malignant mesothelioma.
Dr Rathjen said BCN105 was unlike other cancer drugs in that its two-pronged action attacked the centerof tumors and also directly attacked cancer cells. “A lot of chemotherapies will kill tumor cells but the cancers are able to evade and become resistant to chemotherapy,”
“We don’t believe that cancers will become resistant to 105, using the same mechanism that they use to become resistant to other chemotherapies…Really, any solid tumor type that we tested this drug on in animals, it will shut down the blood vessels within those solid tumors and it will kill a cancer cell,” Dr Rathjen said.
