DelMar Pharmaceuticals Announces Expansion of VAL-083 Development Program to Include Ovarian Cancer

On September 2, 2015 DelMar Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (OTCQX: DMPI) ("DelMar" and the "Company"), a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of new cancer therapies, reported that it will present an abstract entitled, "A Comparison of the Mechanisms and Cytotoxic Activity of Dianhydrogalactitol (VAL-083) to Cisplatin in Ovarian Tumor Models Harboring Wild-type and Mutant p53," at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) (Free AACR Whitepaper) Advances in Ovarian Cancer Research: Exploiting Vulnerabilities Conference being held October 17-20, 2015 in Orlando, FL (Press release, DelMar Pharmaceuticals, SEP 2, 2015, View Source [SID:1234507377]).

Schedule your 30 min Free 1stOncology Demo!
Discover why more than 1,500 members use 1stOncology™ to excel in:

Early/Late Stage Pipeline Development - Target Scouting - Clinical Biomarkers - Indication Selection & Expansion - BD&L Contacts - Conference Reports - Combinatorial Drug Settings - Companion Diagnostics - Drug Repositioning - First-in-class Analysis - Competitive Analysis - Deals & Licensing

                  Schedule Your 30 min Free Demo!

The presentation will summarize VAL-083’s potential as a new treatment for ovarian cancer in the context of DelMar’s recent research and historical data from prior NCI-sponsored clinical trials.

"These data have been developed in collaboration with researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center and are aligned with our business model to leverage historical clinical proof-of-concept with modern biological data to solve modern unmet medical needs in the treatment of cancer," said Jeffrey Bacha, DelMar’s president and CEO.

DelMar Pharmaceuticals is currently conducting a Phase II clinical trial with VAL-083 for the treatment of refractory glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Interim data from this trial presented at the American Association of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) (Free ASCO Whitepaper) Annual meeting demonstrated a promising dose-response trend in patients with recurrent GBM. DelMar will present the next update of its GBM program at the 2nd International Symposium on Clinical and Basic Research in Glioblastoma, being held September 9-12, 2015 in Toledo, Spain.

The Company has also announced plans to initiate clinical development with VAL-083 in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which will be funded through DelMar’s collaboration with Guangxi Wuzhou Pharmaceutical (Group) Co. Ltd. Details of this trial will be presented at the 16th World Conference on Lung Cancer being held September 7 – 9 in Denver, Colorado.

About VAL-083

VAL-083 is a "first-in-class", small-molecule chemotherapeutic. In more than 40 Phase I and II clinical studies sponsored by the U.S. National Cancer Institute, VAL-083 demonstrated safety and efficacy in treating a number of cancers including lung, brain, cervical, ovarian tumors and leukemia. VAL-083 is approved in China for the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) and lung cancer and has received orphan drug designation in Europe and the U.S. for the treatment of gliomas.

DelMar is currently studying VAL-083 in a multi-center Phase I/II clinical trial for patients with refractory glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) in accordance with the protocol that has been filed with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at five clinical centers in the United States: Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN); UCSF (San Francisco, CA) and three centers associated with the Sarah Cannon Cancer Research Institute (Nashville, TN, Sarasota, FL and Denver, CO). As a potential treatment for glioblastoma, VAL-083’s mechanism of action appears to be unaffected by the expression of MGMT, a DNA repair enzyme that is implicated chemotherapy resistance and poor outcomes following front-line treatment with Temodar (temozolomide).