Shares in Sydney-based Novogen are up over 35 per cent on Thursday after the company reported positive results from a study of its investigational compound for the treatment of melanoma, ANISINA.
According to the company, studies conducted at The University of Queensland Diamantina Institute (UQDI) revealed that ANISINA killed melanoma cells irrespective of their mutational status.
"The significance of this finding lies in the fact that melanoma is associated with a variety of mutations, with those to the BRAF gene being the most prominent," it said.
"A mutation to the BRAF gene occurs in about half of all melanoma patients and two drugs that target that mutation (vemurafenib and dabrafenib) have come to market in recent times.
"No targeted therapy exists for the 50% of melanoma patients whose tumors do not have the BRAF mutation. But even where a response is obtained with a BRAF-inhibitor, resistance typically develops within a year of treatment. Therefore the development of a drug that kills melanoma cells irrespective of their BRAF or any other mutational status has become an urgent clinical imperative."
Novogen said it believes that ANISINA represents a significant potential opportunity to meet this need.
ANISINA is an anti-tropomyosin compound that targets the cytoskeleton of the cancer cells.
In the studies, UQDI screened ANISINA against a panel of melanoma cells obtained from patients and which represented the spectrum of mutations (BRAF, NRAS and c-KIT) commonly found in the community.
"ANISINA was uniformly cytotoxic to the panel of cells, regardless of their mutational status," it said. "It is being brought into the clinic for the treatment of cancers as a companion drug for the anti-mitotic family of drugs...the taxanes and vinca alkaloids."
The company said ANISINA is being brought into the clinic in early-2016 for the treatment of solid cancers, with late-stage melanoma and prostate cancer in adults and neuroblastoma in children being three key target indications.
Graham Kelly PhD, Novogen Group CEO, said, "These results support our belief that ANISINA has the potential to become one of the most widely used anti-cancer drugs across the full spectrum of cancer. In conjunction with our clinical advisors, we have a clinical strategy laid out which we intend to prosecute all the way through to achieving regulatory approval."