AustCancer identifies breast cancer treatment compounds

Novel compounds for breast cancer treatment have been identified by Perth-based company Australian Cancer Technology (AustCancer) through backing by UK-based drug discovery company, BioFocus.

Alistair Cowden, AustCancer's managing director, said the project was moving so quickly that the company was considering taking the compound to the clinic late next year.

He said the company had come up with a number of target compounds that were of interest after screening 15,000 representative compounds out of the 110,000 compounds in the BioFocus library.

"We have got to this stage in a quarter of the time a university would take to do it," he said. Based on its existing retroviral display technology, BioFocus had developed a cell-based assay to identify compounds that down-regulate erbB receptors on ductal breast carcinoma cell lines.

The erbB cell surface receptor is critical to the growth of certain types of breast cancer, so the target compound works by blocking the erbB receptor.

"The compounds in the library are easily manufactured and synthesized to GMP standards," Cowden said. It was much quicker to use BioFocus' compound library than to develop drugs through bio-prospecting compounds from the natural ecosystem.

A similarly functioning breast cancer drug currently on the market has annual sales of $1 billion. The drug, Herceptin, has just been approved by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee for government subsidy in Australia.

Cowden said Herceptin was expensive, costing breast cancer patients about $4000 per month for the rest of their lifetime.

He said AustCancer was developing small molecule breast cancer drugs that should be less expensive to manufacture than the larger antibody-based drug, Herceptin, currently on the market.

The 50:50 joint venture between AustCancer and BioFocus began in July 2001 to access drug discovery technologies not available in Australia.

"BioFocus has come up with idea and we are funding the project," Cowden said. "They retain 50 per cent equity and after certain expenditure we will each fund the project 50 per cent."

Since the Hergulin project began nine months ago, AustCancer has poured $500,000 into it. Other cancer drugs using BioFocus technology are also in the pipeline for AustCancer. One project targets the inhibition of a specific kinase gene. "We are trying to make cancer cells less resistant to DNA-damaging therapies such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy," Cowden said.

Down the track, BioFocus does not have the capacity to take drugs to the market, he said. Instead, AustCancer will manage the clinical trial part of the process in Australia.