Therapeutic Areas

The primary goal of drugs targeting tumor metabolism pathways is to take advantage of cancer-specific nutrient dependencies to block cancer growth or activate the body’s cancer-fighting cells.

Changes in cellular metabolism are remarkably consistent across many tumor types, yet fundamentally different from normal cells, providing the potential to develop broadly applicable agents that target these altered pathways, but have less toxicity than standard cytotoxic agents.

We currently have programs in renal cell carcinoma, triple negative breast cancer and melanoma.

Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC)

According to the National Cancer Institute, renal cell carcinoma is diagnosed in approximately 62,700 people each year in the United States. RCC is the most common type of kidney cancer. Approximately 50% of renal cell carcinoma patients will require chemotherapy at some point to treat their metastatic disease. Clear cell is the most common form of kidney cancer comprising 75%-85% of cases.

Triple-Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC)

According to the American Cancer Society, over 250,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in the United States and approximately 40,000 women will die from the disease in 2017. Between 10% and 20% of newly diagnosed cases of breast cancer are classified as triple-negative breast cancer. TNBC is a subset of breast cancer that lacks the estrogen receptor, the progesterone receptor, and the HER2 receptor. TNBC patients have relatively few treatment options since they lack expression of the targets for hormone- and HER2-based therapeutics. TNBC tends to have a higher rate of metastasis, recurs sooner following first line treatment and has a poorer prognosis and a lower overall survival rate than other subtypes of breast cancer. The incidence of TNBC is higher among African American women.

Melanoma

The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2017 about 87,110 new melanomas will be diagnosed (about 52,170 in men and 34,940 in women) and approximately 9,730 people are expected to die of melanoma (about 6,380 men and 3,350 women). The rates of melanoma have been rising for the last 30 years. Melanoma is a cancer that usually starts in a certain type of skin cell and cancer of the skin is by far the most common of all cancers. Melanoma accounts for only about 1% of skin cancers but causes a large majority of skin cancer deaths.