Novogen granted key phenoxodiol patent in US

Sydney pharmaceutical company Novogen (ASX: NRT, NASDAQ: NVGN) has been granted a US patent covering all applications of its promising anti-cancer therapeutic phenoxodiol for benign and malignant cancers, including ovarian, breast, prostate and cervical cancers.

Novogen's majority owned-US subsidiary, Marshall Edwards, is developing phenoxodiol, and has been licensed to commercialise the drug, now in Phase II clinical trials in Australia and the US.

Phenoxodiol is a phenolic compound, originally identified by Novogen researchers as a predicted derivative of a natural isoflavonoid in red clover.

They were able to synthesize the molecule, which proved to have remarkable potency when cancer researchers at Yale University in the US tested it against chemo-resistant cell lines from women with ovarian cancer who had developed secondary tumours.

The Yale researchers tested a wide variety of molecules with potential anti-cancer activity against a panel of several dozen ovarian cancer cell lines; it was the only one to achieve a 100 per cent kill rate.

Phenoxodiol appears to disrupt or inhibit multiple genetic pathways in cancerous cells, at least one of them new to science. Novogen's MD, Christopher Naughton says the company's research collaborators in Australia and the US are still working to define its principal mode of action.

Naughton said the granting of the US patent application on phenoxodiol consolidates and further secures Novogen's intellectual property position.