Lorus to collaborate with leading Japanese company

Lorus Therapeutics has signed a collaboration agreement with Sumitomo Pharmaceuticals, Japan's leading pharmaceutical company, and Koken.

According to terms of the agreement, Lorus - a biopharmaceutical company specialising in the research, development and commercialization of pharmaceutical products and technologies for the management of cancer - will provide Sumitomo with proprietary antisense oligonucleotides, specifically the lead drug candidate GTI-2601, complementary to Thioredoxin mRNA. The agreement also states that Lorus, Sumitomo and Koken will jointly own the compounds that result from this collaboration (on a ratio of Lorus: Sumitomo and Koken, 1:1). Financial terms of were not disclosed.

Thioredoxin is involved in tumour formation, progression and metastasis by a variety of mechanisms. Tumour samples from patients with lung, colon, cervical, gastric and hepatocellular carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and acute lymphocytic leukemia, show elevated levels of Thioredoxin, and expression levels correlate with disease prognosis. Over-expression has been linked with resistance to chemotherapeutic agents.

Given these observations, reducing the level of Thioredoxin with antisense drug should interfere with multiple pathways that lead to cancer progression. Through an in vitro and in vivo screening process using cultured human cancer cells and potent anti-tumour and anti-metastatic activity in vivo in animal models of human cancers, Lorus has already demonstrated that GTI-2601 has target and sequence specific anti-cancer activity in vitro.

Sumitomo and Koken have developed an advanced delivery system based on collagen complexed with macromolecules. A study using a pre-clinical animal disease model has demonstrated that injection of the delivery technology complexed to antisense oligonucleotides is more effective than uncomplexed oligonucleotides, with improved efficacy demonstrated at decreased doses.