In this edition of The Onco’Zine Brief Peter Hofland talks with Greg Van Wyk, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Medical Officer of Noxopharm, a clinical-stage Australian drug development company with offices in Sydney, New York and Hong Kong.

The company is developing a number of drug candidates including an advanced dosage formulation of the generic anti-cancer agent called idronoxil, which is designed to specifically target cancer cells, rendering them less able to survive radiotherapy. The drug is marketed as Veyonda®

Radiation seeks to kill cancer cells by damaging their DNA beyond any ability of the cancer cell to repair that damage.

However, all cells have a well-developed mechanism to repair DNA damage. And if a cancer cell is successful in repairing the damage caused by radiation designed to kill it, and survives, therapy is unsuccessful.

Scientists have developed a number of drugs designed to block that repair mechanism.
This means that more cancer cells can be killed following radiotherapy.

Unfortunately, many of these agents have not yet been successful. One reason is that they do not discriminate between repair mechanisms in cancer cells and repair mechanisms in healthy cells. And these drugs also increase the toxic side-effects of radiotherapy, countering any benefit from their use.

Idronoxil is different because it only blocks repair mechanisms in cancer cells... as a result, healthy cells remain unaffected. But in order to block the repair mechanism, idronoxil needs to be present on a continuous basis. When it is not present, the repair process continues unabated.

Researchers at Noxopharm have been able to develop a formulation of idronoxil that keeps the agent in the body in an active form for long periods of time.

The result is a continuous anti-cancer effect for as many days as the drug is administered. The drug has also being studies as an adjunct therapy to a standard of care chemotherapy drug.

The purpose of this approach is to increasing the sensitivity of widely-used chemotherapies while, at the same time, reducing many the well-documented damaging side-effects.

Earlier this year data from the first series of pre-clinical studies confirmed that idronoxil activates the cells associated with both the innate and adaptive immune systems. Noxopharm’s Veyonda® works in tandem with both chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The drug is designed to increasing the number of cancer cells killed by those treatments.

But the drug goes a step further when it acts as an immuno-oncology drug by switching on the body’s first-line immune defense mechanism. This is the main mechanism responsible for fighting cancer. What distinguishes Noxopharm’s investigational drug is that it works with, not against the body’s defenses against cancer.

Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are destructive treatments. Although they are designed to kill cancer, they can also damage healthy cells. And unfortunately they can also damage the defense mechanisms that the body relies on to fight cancer. The end result with standard chemotherapy and radiotherapy is a restricted anti-cancer effect because those treatments may also have disabled the body’s defense mechanisms. 

The aim NoxoPharm’s treatment is that it ensures that the immune system is switched ON and Primed to kill any cancer cells that survive the chemotherapy and radiotherapy. 

This early defense system is known as the innate immune system and is very effective at detecting and eradicating abnormal cells such as cancer cells. Noxopharm’s Veyonda® is considered to be a first-in-class activator of the innate immune system. This is the system, that scientists increasingly are beginning to see, must be activated if a cancer is to have any chance of being permanently eradicated.