On May 3, 2023 iOnctura, a clinical-stage biotech developing selective cancer therapies against targets that play critical roles in multiple tumor survival pathways, reported it has exercised an exclusive option with Clavius Pharmaceuticals, adding the novel oral TGF-β pathway inhibitor, IOA-359, to its pipeline (Poster, iOnctura, MAY 3, 2023, View Source [SID1234640233]). The Company also announces it has, in collaboration with the University of Twente (UT), been awarded a grant from Health Holland and KWF (Dutch Cancer Society), reflecting the potential of IOA-359.
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Under the terms of the licence agreement, iOnctura is solely responsible for the global development and commercialisation of the small molecule inhibitor. The TGF-β pathway plays a critical role in promoting tumor aggressiveness, immune escape and resistance to therapy, making it an attractive target for cancer therapy. Previous attempts to interrupt TGF-β pathway signaling in cancer have been thwarted by drug-associated toxicities and activation of resistance pathways by the tumor. By developing a safe TGF-β pathway inhibitor and characterising the resistance mechanisms that typically arise when targeting the TGF-β pathway alone, iOnctura’s data-driven precision oncology methods are being used to design novel, safe combination treatments that promise to override tumor survival resistance pathways.
Supplementing iOnctura’s internal preclinical investigations, the KWF grant led by Dr Ruchi Bansal, Assistant Professor of Medical Cell BioPhysics, will utilise UT’s unique model system to provide iOnctura with a valuable preclinical pharmacology package for IOA-359.
Catherine Pickering, Chief Executive Officer of iOnctura, said: "IOA-359 is an exciting addition to our preclinical pipeline. TGF-β is an established target in oncology yet we are the first company applying precision methods to intelligently combine targeting this pathway alongside other tumor survival and resistance pathways. We recently demonstrated that the autotaxin/LPA pathway has a role in mediating TGF-β resistance in pancreatic cancer and are excited to further explore combining IOA-359 with our autotaxin inhibitor, IOA-289, preclinically."