IGF Oncology Drug Summary

Source:  IGF Oncology, LLC

Lead Drug IGF-MTX

• Insulin-like growth factor variant protein attached to the chemotherapy drug methotrexate.
• Targets a receptor protein, IGF-1R, overexpressed on cancer, so it is a targeted chemotherapy that selectively targets and kills cancer cells and has less effect on healthy cells.
• Approximately 13 times more effective than methotrexate in mouse model of solid tumor cancers.

 

Phase 1 human clinical trial results: 

 

• Effective at a surprisingly low dose, about 12 times lower dose than the minimum dose methotrexate is usually used at.
• One Hodgkins lymphoma patient whose cancer progressed on standard drugs is now cancer free after treatment with IGF-MTX.
• Efficacy in three other solid tumor patients.
• ZERO decrease in blood cell counts, the most important side effect of standard chemotherapy.
• Opening a Phase 2a clinical trial at Mayo Clinic in the blood cancer myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) in January 2018.
• MDS is a deadly blood cancer with no very effective treatments.
• Only two currently approved drugs for MDS, and they don’t work very well.
• IGF-MTX kills MDS cells in the laboratory and is synergistic with the most commonly used of two approved drugs.
• IGF receptors are overexpressed on MDS disease cells.
• IGF-MTX is well suited for this disease because the patients cannot tolerate any decrease in blood cells, and unlike all other cancer chemotherapy, IGF-MTX does not cause any decrease in blood cells.

 

Second drug: CPE-54

 

• An engineered food poisoning toxin.
• Binds to a target overexpressed on ovarian cancer and other cancers.
• Well suited for late stage ovarian cancer because it kills late stage ovarian cancer cells better than early stage, unlike all other drugs.
• Clinical trial planned to begin in 2018.