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Posted on Tuesday, Dec 9, 2008

BTG Licenses Novel Anticancer Compound to Onyx Pharmaceuticals

Source: BTG

Life sciences company BTG has licensed its experimental anti-cancer compound, BGC 945, to Onxy pharmaceuticals, who will further develop and commercialize the compound. BGC 945 is an anti-cancer agent in the class of compounds known as TS inhibitors—compounds which derive their cancer treatment effects from the inhibition of thymidylate synthase (TS), an enzyme essential to successful DNA replication and repair. Thus, inhibition of thymidylate synthase can disrupt the processes by which cells divide and replicate, thereby controlling or, hopefully preventing, the growth of cancerous cells. BGC 945 is still in the preclinical stages, but its novel mechanism of action—entering tumor cells through their alpha-folate receptor—has shown promise for the treatment of a number of specific cell types, including mesothelioma cells and lung cancer cells. Alpha-folate receptor is over-expressed in these tumors, as well as a number of other cancers, so therapies that target it may have great promise for their treatment.

As BGC 945 is still in the preclinical stages, its actual efficacy for the treatment of pleural mesothelioma or peritoneal mesothelioma has not yet been tested, but the compound’s unique mechanism of action provides some hope that it may prove effective as a mesothelioma treatment.

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Nancy Meredith is a blog and web content writer with more than 20 years of professional experience in the Information Technology industry. She has been writing about Mesothelioma for 4 years. Follow Nancy on Google+