In a potentially monumental breakthrough in the war against cancer, Defence Therapeutics has revealed that its leading AccuTOXTM compound effectively kills cancer cells through DNA damage.
Cancer is generally described as a state of uncontrolled cell proliferation, predominantly due to a cell losing its ability to activate its own death via a specific set of proteins known to sense unusual activities. However, despite it being challenging to reactivate these specific pathways to kill cancer cells, AccuTOXTM can address this.
Defence Therapeutics recently revealed its AccumTM variant – AccuTOXTM – can control cancer growth when injected directly into tumours. AccuTOXTM, combined with multiple immune checkpoints, resulted in a survival rate between 60% and 100%, based on the pre-clinical tumour model studies in mice.
The mode of action of the AccuTOXTM approach is a non-biased transcriptomic application and revealed that the compound impairs several crucial pathways, including DNA replication, cell division, nuclear integrity, and multiple modifications affecting DNA activity.
The accumulation of exhaustive cell repair mechanisms triggered by AccuTOXTM combined with the build-up of misfolded proteins and generation of free radicals induce irreversible DNA damage leading to a general collapse in several cellular pathways that kills cancer cells.
Sébastien Plouffe, the CEO of Defence Therapeutics, commented: “Defence’s breakthrough discovery with its AccuTOXTM formulation as a novel potent small molecule capable of killing cancer cells is a significant advancement and development for oncology cancer treatment applications with AccumTM. Discovering that AccuTOXTM can behave as a chemotherapeutic agent targeting the DNA of cancer cells and an immune-checkpoint inhibitor booster is a new discovery that is highly valuable to Defence’s pipeline and potential future developments.
“The AccuTOXTM presents a novel discovery as a platform for targeting multiple cancers. This novel discovery creates significant values and applications to our Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC) pipeline. Results are convincing that AccuTOXTM is the perfect potent small molecule to use in the development of our own ADC.”
Defence is currently conducting GLP studies on AccuTOXTM prior to initiating a Phase I trial in North America.
