Clinical stage biopharma company Rexahn Pharmaceuticals has entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), for a novel drug delivery platform, which targets the delivery of chemotherapeutic agents directly into cancerous tumors.
Dubbed as Nano-Polymer-Drug Conjugate Systems (NPDCS), the technology allows direct delivery of chemotherapeutic drugs into the tumors, which has shown increased efficacy and decreased toxicity.
The company said that the approach reduces the levels of freely circulating anti-cancer agents in the body, which can dramatically minimize potential adverse events, and maximizes anti-tumor activity by accumulating in the cancer tumor.
NPDCS, which has capabilities to create many therapeutic candidates simultaneously, was used by Rexahn to create first drug candidate RX-21101, a polymer conjugated form of docetaxel, a common chemotherapy agent.
Compared to intravenously administered free docetaxel, RX-21101 showed increased efficacy and reduced toxicity, and it may increase anti-tumor activity and a lower incidence of adverse events.
University of Utah departments of pharmaceutics and pharmaceutical chemistry and bioengineering professor and co-developer of the NPDCS technology Dr Hamid Ghandehari said the NPDCS platform represents a significant advancement in targeted delivery of chemotherapeutic agents directly to cancer tumors.
"Other approaches have not been able to combine the controlled, targeted release of existing chemotherapeutic directly to the cancerous tumor," Ghandehari added.
