Meditech announces positive HyDOX results

Meditech Research (ASX: MTR) has announced that its pre-clinical animal studies for anti-cancer drug HyDOX showed a three-fold reduction of heart damage.

The study was carried out in an animal model developed by the US FDA to test drug cardiotoxicity.

"HyDOX takes doxorubicin, a commonly used chemotherapeutic drug, and combines it with a specific formulation of hyaluronan, or hyaluronic acid," said Dr Tracey Brown, Director of Scientific Operations for Meditech and a researcher at Monash University.

She said that this allows the drug to be more specifically targeted to solid tumours, which significantly over-express surface receptors for hyaluronan.

Doxorubicin and other anti-cancer drugs often cause heart damage due to production of free radicals. Brown said that one potential mechanism for the reduced cardiotoxicity of HyDOX is free-radical removal by the hyaluronan.

"We have a researcher looking at what the mechanism might be," she said.

Prof Richard Fox of the Centre for Development of Cancer Therapeutics, and a non-executive director of the company said that earlier pre-clinical studies comparing HyDOX to doxorubicin alone demonstrated that HyDOX had increased anti-tumour capabilities.

"We are particularly encouraged that the reduction in cardiotoxicity seen in pre-clinical testing will be confirmed in human clinical trials. This could enable cancer patients to receive a treatment protocol with HyDOX that improves tumour response, substantially reduces associated toxicity, and offers the prospect of prolonged patient survival as well," he said.

Human Phase I safety studies have recently been completed by the company and results are expected to be released later this month. The new preclinical results will help Meditech to design Phase II human clinical trials, said the company.

Currently doxorubicin and other chemotherapeutics are used in combination with drugs that mitigate the cardiotoxic effects, but do not provide any anti-tumour activity. The market for these drugs is approximately $US120 million.

Meditech believes that the HyDOX formulation of doxorubicin would provide enhanced anti-tumour activity and reduced cardiotoxicity, as well as being a lot cheaper to produce.

Brown said that several large pharmaceutical companies have identified doxorubicin as potentially having a large market if cardiotoxicity problems could be overcome.

Meditech's share price increased by 5 per cent to $0.32 after the announcement was made. At the time of writing the shares were trading at $0.30.