Pharminox raises £1.5m to progress anti-cancer drug candidates
Key European patent granted on lead PMX 500 programme centred on telomeres
Pharminox, a UK-based developer of cancer drugs based at BioCity, Nottingham, has raised approximately £1.5m to progress its portfolio of novel cancer therapeutics.
Peter Worrall, chief executive of Pharminox, said the new funding would enable the company to ‘maintain momentum in its r&d pipeline’, and progress its two leading programmes towards preclinical candidate selection over the next few months, with a view to out-licensing them within the next 12–18 months.
Pharminox’s leading programme – PMX 500 –is focused on developing small molecules that promote rapid death of cancer cells by disrupting telomere function. The company has identified a series of compounds that demonstrate potent and selective anti-tumour activity in in vivo studies.
The company has also been granted a key European patent covering the lead compounds from its PMX 500 programme.
Worrall added: ‘The corresponding US patent has already been granted, and in the last few months we have also filed two additional patent applications covering further novel compound series, greatly strengthening the patent estate around this programme.’
With its second programme – PMX 700 – Pharminox aims to discover and develop improved follow-up compounds to the anti-cancer drug temozolomide (Temodar, Temodal, Merck & Co).
Pharminox, a spin-out from Oxford University, is also running PMX 900 to discover compounds that inhibit the activity of a key protein in the Base Excision Repair pathway, another important DNA repair mechanism.
