Another boost for Novogen (ASX:NRT) after announcing positive results from a trial of TRXE-009 for the treatment of incurable paediatric brain cancer.
The company's share price has more than tripled in 2015, with another boost after pre-clinical data on TRXE-009 confirmed its potential to become a significant new therapy against a currently incurable paediatric brain cancer, called diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG).
Novogen has made a series of positive announcements recently, including a successful capital raise and positive trial results for melanoma therapy, ANISINA.
DIPG has a very poor prognosis with a median survival of less than one year, a statistic that has not changed in over 50 years.
"It is considered amongst the most challenging cancers to treat; the diffuse nature of the cancer means that surgery is not an option, radiation provides only temporary relief, and chemotherapy has yet to provide any clinical benefit," the company said.
This latest study looked at the ability of TRXE-009 to kill freshly established patient-derived cell cultures collected from patients with DIPG.
"The studies indicate that TRXE-009 kills DIPG cells at therapeutically relevant concentrations by inducing a specific type of cell death - caspase-dependent apoptosis," the company said. "In contrast to its pronounced effect on DIPG cancer cells, normal brain astrocytes are affected only at much higher concentrations of TRXE-009, confirming data seen with other cancer cell types that TRXE-009 has a high therapeutic index and is able to target cancer cells at concentrations that have little effect on normal cells."
According to Lead Investigator Dr David Ziegler, "There are preliminary studies but we are very excited about the striking activity we are seeing in these highly resistant tumorspheres. TRXE-009 is one of the most potent compounds we have studied to date in this setting."