Cancer Targeted Technology Receives an SBIR Grant and Announces Expansion of Its Pipeline

Cancer Targeted Technology Receives an SBIR Grant and Announces Expansion of Its Pipeline

October 23, 2018 09:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cancer Targeted Technology (CTT), a privately-held Seattle-based biotechnology company focusing on small molecules that bind to pivotal enzyme cancer targets, announced that it received a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to develop CTT1700, a unique prodrug targeted at men with prostate cancer that express Prostate Specific Membrane Antigen (PSMA). PSMA is over-expressed on prostate cancer and this expression increases as the cancer metastasizes and becomes hormone-resistant. Unlike other agents targeting PSMA in development, CTT’s agents bind irreversibly to PSMA. This distinctive mode of binding enhances uptake and results in rapid and extensive internalization by tumor cells, leading to increased accumulation of the drugs within the tumor. CTT1700 relies on a novel drug-release technology that is triggered by the pH inside of the cell to selectively release the chemotherapy once inside the tumor cells. As a result, toxic side effects to bystander or normal cells are reduced or eliminated.

"This new chemotherapeutic drug, CTT1700, like all of CTT’s drugs, are based on the same versatile modular PSMA-targeting platform. This platform allows for rapid development of various PSMA-targeted agents by conveniently swapping out the payload,” commented Dr. Cliff Berkman, Professor of Chemistry at Washington State University (WSU) and consultant to CTT as its Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Berkman and WSU were instrumental in developing the new drug-release technology for CTT1700 that was licensed to CTT in 2017.

CTT’s pipeline now includes three important drugs targeting cancers that express PSMA. CTT1057 is a diagnostic PET imaging agent capable of rapidly and sensitively detecting metastatic disease in prostate cancer patients. CTT1057 demonstrated excellent results in Phase 1 clinical trials completed in 2017 and the drug was licensed to AAA/Novartis in January, 2018. The second agent, CTT1403, is a radiotherapeutic drug that delivers a therapeutic dose of 177-lutetium to tumor cells expressing PSMA. CTT1403, unlike other PSMA-targeted drugs, includes an albumin binding component that imparts a long circulation time allowing for more of the drug to get to the tumor cells. CTT1403 is expected to start Phase I clinical trials in prostate cancer patients in early 2019. CTT1700, currently in preclinical development, is the third agent in CTT’s pipeline and would be the first drug to use binding to the PSMA biomarker to target chemotherapy to prostate cancer.

Contacts

Cancer Targeted Technology
Dr. Beatrice Langton-Webster
bealw@cancertargetedtechnology.com