Date: 2015-11-02
Type of information: Grant
Company: Hercules Pharmaceuticals (The Netherlands)
Investors: European Eurostars Programme (EU)
Amount: € 3,5 million
Funding type: grant
Planned used: Hercules Pharmaceuticals was founded in 2013 to develop and commercialize the invention of Professor David Sherr, an international key opinion leader in the field of cancer at Boston University. Professor Sherr demonstrated that the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor plays an important role in the occurrence and progression of cancer. He also discovered that blocking the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor with a small molecule, non-toxic drug is a promising and novel way to treat aggressive carcinomas, including Triple Negative Breast Cancer. The Eurostars grant will enable Hercules to advance CB7993113, a novel non-toxic targeted anti-cancer drug, through pre-clinical development towards clinical trials in cancer patients. The development work will be done by a Dutch-English-Finnish-Danish-French consortium of specialist life-science companies and with researchers at Boston University in the U.S. Hercules’ lead product, CB7993113, attacks tumors in three synergistic ways. Firstly, by inhibiting the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor (AHR), CB7993113 blocks spreading of the tumor via a direct effect on AHR positive tumor cells. Secondly, it reduces the number and function of Cancer Stem Cells, which are a type of cancer cells that resist chemotherapy and often cause metastasis and relapse of cancer even after “successful” treatment. Thirdly, CB7993113 may enhance tumor-specific immune response, which are dampened by the cancer itself. In this regard, CB7993113 is likely to act in a fashion similar to that of Check-Point inhibitors, a class of highly effective anti-cancer drugs. CB7993113 has shown efficacy in in-vivo cancer models in which it dramatically improved survival from 25% to 90% and inhibited tumor metastasis. Once proven to be safe for human use, the drug may be tested in patients with carcinomas including TNBC, for which there is a critical unmet medical need.
Others: * On November 2, 2015, Hercules Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company developing an innovative treatment for women with Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC), has been awarded a € 3,5 million Eurostars grant for the development of its lead drug CB7993113 for treatment of TNBC.
Therapeutic area: Cancer - Oncology
