Accelerating anticancer drug discovery
Melbourne start-up company MecRx has secured a $4 million investment from the Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF) to advance its breakthrough technology for accelerating drug discovery.
The investment was secured through a combination of a Victorian Government Innovation Voucher and a creative risk-sharing agreement between the biotech company and CSIRO. The agreement sees CSIRO assisting MecRx in validating its technology platform, which uses proprietary ‘hit identification’ technology to create promising starting points for new anticancer drugs.
CSIRO has shared the R&D costs in return for a mixture of milestone payments and shares in MecRx, based on its success. CSIRO currently has a 14.6% equity stake in the company.
“CSIRO and the Victorian Government were crucial in getting our technology off the ground,” said MecRx board director Dr Chris Smith.
“Without their funding support and expertise, the idea would never have been tested and the huge potential our platform offers for new drug discovery would have gone unrealised.”
MecRx and CSIRO have now joined forces with the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre to develop and test a drug lead for inhibiting the biological target cMyc — a key driver of destructive cell mutation in over 50% of all human cancers. If successful, the drug could be tested in cancer patients within a few years.
“The drug lead directly targets cMyc, a protein which causes cancerous cells from a wide range of organs and tissues to divide uncontrollably,” said Peter Mac’s associate director for laboratory research, Professor Ricky Johnstone.
“If successful, the resulting medicine would have broad application in a large number of cancers.”
CSIRO’s chemistry group leader, Dr Jack Ryan, added that an effective way to successfully inhibit cMyc has eluded scientists across the world for the past 30 years.
“We’re delighted to see this work translated to drug development, which we hope will ultimately lead to clinical trails through our partners at Peter Mac and commercialisation of the world’s first cMyc drug,” he said.
Originally published here.
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