Medannex awarded ‘Transforming Cancer Therapeutics’ grant to accelerate new treatment for bone cancer in children
Medannex today announced an Innovate UK grant to fund a £313,000 project developing a new treatment for paediatric osteosarcoma. The ‘Transforming Cancer Therapeutics’ award will allow the Scottish biopharmaceutical company to prepare its first-in-class therapy (MDX-124) for a clinical study in this rare childhood cancer.
The ‘Transforming Cancer Therapeutics’ award will allow the Scottish biopharmaceutical company to prepare its first-in-class therapy (MDX-124) for a clinical study in this rare childhood cancer. Medannex will work in close collaboration with senior scientists at ARU (Cambridge) and world-leading paediatric oncologists to deliver this important project.
MDX-124 is the first clinic-ready agent to target annexin-A1, a protein known to drive numerous cancers and other diseases. In preclinical tests, MDX-124 has been shown to stop the growth and spread of certain cancers, as well as harnessing the immune system to attack tumours. MDX-124 is currently being evaluated in a first-in-human Phase 1b oncology study in adults (‘ATTAINMENT’).
Recent data mining of a paediatric genomics database and staining of tumour tissue revealed that annexin-A1 is highly expressed in osteosarcoma, making MDX-124 a strong candidate to treat this disease.
Osteosarcoma is a rare primary cancer of the bone characterised by a high degree of malignancy, strong invasiveness, rapid disease progression and a high mortality rate. Approximately 50% of cases are in children and young adults, representing about 2% of all paediatric cancers. In the UK, around 65% of children with osteosarcoma survive for 5 years after diagnosis, however this drops to only 24% for those with metastatic disease. Therefore, there remains a significant and persistent unmet clinical need for novel therapies like MDX-124.
The project’s Clinical Advisory Board is led by Prof. Pamela Kearns (Chair of Clinical Paediatric Oncology, University of Birmingham), who said: ‘This grant award will allow Medannex to tackle the critical unmet need for new treatments in osteosarcoma. I look forward to helping guide the company’s development in this area and exploring the potential of MDX-124 to radically improve patient outcomes.’
Medannex CEO, Ian Abercrombie, said: ‘We’re grateful to Innovate UK for this resounding endorsement of the potential of our first-in-class therapy to make a real difference to osteosarcoma patients and their families. Our team is excited to drive the project forward with the support of our scientific collaborators and specialist clinical advisors.’
Prof Chris Parris, Head of School of Life Sciences at ARU, said: ‘We’re delighted to be collaborating with Medannex to explore this innovative approach to childhood cancer treatment and we look forward to generating key data in the coming months.’
Innovate UK will fund £231,000 of the project costs, with the remainder financed by Medannex.
