Starpharma brings its novel technology to leading cancer treatment

Chemotherapy drugs are big business, and Melbourne-based Starpharma is looking to get involved by applying its dendrimer technology to reformulate and improve leading therapies.

The company announced today that it will be taking its dendrimer-based reformulation of the widely used docataxel into further pre-clinical studies as a lead candidate in its cancer drug delivery programme.

Docataxel is used to treat breast cancer, lung cancer and prostate cancer, and generated sales of €2.122 billion ($2.9 billion) last year.

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According to Starpharma, the dendrimer formulation of docataxel showed a 2000 to 8000-fold improvement in water solubility, which opens up the possibility of an improved formulation that doesn’t have the same pre-medication requirements and potential side-effects of the conventional formulation.

Greater water solubility has already been shown to improve other anti-cancer drugs, such as paclitaxel, which was reformulated by American nano-pharmaceutical developer Abraxis. In turn, Abraxis was acquired by Celegene for US$2.9 billion.

“The success seen with Abraxane highlights the significant commercial opportunity of reformulated proprietary chemotherapy agents which can result in improved patient outcomes, significant product sales and extended commercial life through new intellectual property filings,” said Starpharma CEO Dr Jackie Fairley.

“We believe a proprietary docetaxel-dendrimer formulation has a similar potential and as a result we are expanding our internal drug delivery program to fully explore this opportunity.”

Starpharma has also filed a new patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, incorporating recent Docetaxel data.

On the back of the announcement, Starpharma (ASX:SPL) was up 7%, or 9c, to $1.38 as of 1pm today.