Novel hematological cancer drugs

Offentlig prosjektsammendrag

Leukemia is among the most common cancer types in the western world, and is increasing in an aging population. Especially for many elderly, the only curative treatment may be hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, which is not feasible in the majority of these patients. Disease progression is typically marked by accelerated cancer cell growth, very high cancer cell numbers and decreased bone marrow and immune function, life threatening infections and death. Median survival of patients varies greatly spanning from 3 to 10 years from time of diagnosis. Thus, there is a clear unmet medical demand for improved therapies. Tremendous progress has been done in recent years to understand cancer disease mechanism and which has also led to improved treatment regimens based in immune-oncology. Thus, both the expression profile of certain cancer specific antigens, as well as the immune systems ability to mount a response against these antigens suggests that this may become a very potent future therapy. In the current project this is exactly what Nextera and collaborators from OUS aim to do based on cutting edge technology and knowledge. By exploiting the unique technology of Nextera for drug development of targeted therapy in conjunction with the patient access and deep understanding of the carcinogenesis process of certain leukemias found at OUS a novel drug will be made and validated. By ensuring that the drug will be completely cancer specific and in a soluble form, the project will ensure that this new drug will have maximum efficacy in conjunction with minimal side effects. The soluble format will further contribute to patient independent high efficacy, as the therapy is not subject to the in vivo down-regulation mechanism that is seen for many other advanced therapies based on immunoncology principles.