Open Therapeutics announces licensing a new class of anticancer drugs from Nationwide Children’s Hospital. The drug, amphiphilic amines (RCn), shows promise against mouse models of cancer, including pediatric and adult sarcomas, lymphoma, and neuroblastoma. A derivative of RCn, RC16, is approximately ten times more effective against the tumor cells than healthy cells.
As shown with in vivo studies, RCn enhances the effectiveness of approved anticancer chemotherapy drugs etoposide, doxorubicin, and paclitaxel by acting as a nanocarrier. This new technology may provide an ability to specifically target cancer cells by delivering current chemotherapy drugs directly into the cancer cells.
Isabella Orienti, PhD, Professor, Pharmacy and Biotechnology, University of Bologna, Italy, the RCn primary investigator and developer said, “An important aspect of RCn is its ability to accumulate into the mitochondria of cancer cells, thereby disrupting their metabolism and inducing apoptosis that is a form of cell suicide. In addition, RCn may function as a micellar nanocarrier for traditional antitumor drugs, allowing the combination of a mitochondria directed therapy with the conventional antitumor therapy.”
Timothy P. Cripe, MD, PhD, RCn co-investigator and developer, is Principle Investigator at Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Diseases and serves as professor in Pediatrics in the College of Medicine at The Ohio State University. He remarks that “RCn represents a novel type of therapy that destroys the energy centers of the cancer cells.”
“We are excited about this small molecule drug opportunity. Making it freely available to the global research community can fundamentally change the way therapeutics are developed and delivered to the world’s population of patients,” added Jason E. Barkeloo, Chairman, Open Therapeutics.
Later in 2016, Open Therapeutics intends to launch its freely available crowdsourcing web platform.
According to Open Therapeutics CEO, Jerome Hamilton, “Our collaboration with the team at Nationwide Children’s Hospital is a first great example of how open licensing can quickly broaden the availability of new therapies. As our platform grows and these new cooperative philosophies gain traction, we look forward to supporting further development of such treatments.”
About Open Therapeutics LLC
Open Therapeutics (http://OpenTherapeutics.org)is a seven-year old global biotechnology firm that creates and attracts therapeutic and synthetic biology-based technologies. The Company open-sources and hosts its freely available technologies to the global research community in a crowd-sourcing web site, Open Therapeutics™ (http://OpenTherapeutics.net). The Company is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio with laboratory operations in Covington, Kentucky, operations in Minneapolis, MN, and presence in Amman, Jordan, and Bangalore, India.
About The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital
Named to the Top 10 Honor Roll on U.S. News & World Report’s 2016-17 list of “America’s Best Children’s Hospitals,” Nationwide Children’s Hospital is one of America’s largest not-for-profit freestanding pediatric healthcare systems providing wellness, preventive, diagnostic, treatment and rehabilitative care for infants, children and adolescents, as well as adult patients with congenital disease. As home to the Department of Pediatrics of The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Nationwide Children’s faculty train the next generation of pediatricians, scientists and pediatric specialists. The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital is one of the Top 10 National Institutes of Health-funded free-standing pediatric research facilities in the U.S., supporting basic, clinical, translational and health services research at Nationwide Children’s. The Research Institute encompasses three research facilities totaling 525,000 square feet dedicated to research. More information is available at NationwideChildrens.org/Research.
Media Contact:
Jerome Hamilton, CEO, Open Therapeutics
+1 (651) 900-0412
OpenTheraputics.org
@OpenTheraputics