Date: 2014-06-20
Type of information: Presentation of results at a congress
phase: preclinical
Announcement: presentation of results at the 17th Vitamin D Workshop in Chicago, USA
Company: Hybrigenics (France)
Product: inecalcitol and azacytidine
Action
mechanism: Inecalcitol is a vitamin D receptor agonist, and azacytidine is a hypomethylating anticancer drug.
Disease: acute myeloid leukemia (AML)
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
Country:
Trial details:
Latest
news: * On June 20, 2014, Hybrigenics, a bio-pharmaceutical company listed on the Alternext market of Euronext in Paris, with a focus on research and development of new treatments against proliferative diseases, announced the presentation at the 17th Vitamin D Workshop in Chicago, USA, of the results from an international group of researchers on the synergy between inecalcitol, a vitamin D receptor agonist, and azacytidine, a hypomethylating anticancer drug, in in vitro and in vivopreclinical models of Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML).
In this study, inecalcitol in combination with azacytidine has been shown in vitro to inhibit the growth of human AML cell lines, to stimulate their differentiation into more mature and functional myeloid cell type or to induce their programmed cell death (apoptosis) more effectively than the addition of the individual activities of each compound alone. The same synergy has been found in in vivo models of AML in mice treated with both compounds. The molecular basis of this synergy has been elucidated: azacytidine “unmasks” the gene coding for vitamin D receptors (by reducing the methylation of its promoter region). As a consequence, more vitamin D receptors are expressed and available to be activated by inecalcitol.
Azacytidine (Vidaza®, Celgene) and decitabine (Dacogen®, Janssen-Cilag) are two hypomethylating agents already used for AML in older (>65 years old) or frail patients not eligible to standard induction chemotherapy. “Combination of inecalcitol with either of these drugs would be the clinical setting of choice to look for synergistic effects in a future Phase II study in Acute Myeloid Leukemia patients,” said Jean-François Dufour-Lamartinie, Hybrigenics’ Head of Clinical R&D.
