Targeting
Bone Microenvironment - Cancer-Induced Bone Disease
And Bone Cancer |
MBC Pharma's proprietary bone-targeting technology is based on exploiting the bone-seeking properties of bisphosphonates to deliver a drug of interest (anticancer, antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, etc) to the bone microenvironment. At present, our initial focus is in the area of oncology. Cancer Induced Bone Disease is a major cause for morbidity and mortality in cancer patients. More than half of all carcinoma patients develop bone metastases. Current therapies are only palliative. Importantly current chemotherapies are unable to reach effective concentrations in the bone and its microenvironment, which is considered to be extremely critical to cancer progression. All this indicates the need for drugs that can attack and kill bone-associated tumor cells. MBC proprietary molecular design links a bisphosphonate (the bone-targeting component commonly used as osteoporosis drug) to a chemotherapy moiety via a phosphate group. After intravenous administration the conjugate binds to bone, where both drugs are then released. The concentrated drug near the bone drives uptake into the bone-localized cancer cells and osteoclasts (bone resorbing cells). Thus these conjugates will localize at the sites of bone destruction induced by tumor cells providing a unique combination of anti-resorptive properties and increased local concentration of cytotoxic agent, greatly improving efficacy without increasing systemic toxicity. |
Improving
Existing Drugs - Oncology And Viral Diseases
Nucleoside analogs represent the important share of all current anti-cancer and antiviral drugs. These compounds need phosphorylation in order to generate the active species inside the cell. In many cases this process is slow and inefficient. Unfortunately "pre-made" phosphorylated forms cannot be used since the charged nature of the phosphate prevents the compound from getting through the cell wall.
The MBC's compounds under current preclinical development are the vitamin B6 based nucleoside monophosphate prodrugs for use in pancreatic and other cancers as well as certain viral diseases. These compounds therefore provide novel uptake mechanism in addition to delivering activated phosphorylated forms of the drug.