Emerging biopharmaceutical firm Cellceutix has inked a material transfer agreement (MTA) with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, through which the firm will provide MD Anderson with its anticancer drug candidate Kevetrin™ (thioureidobutyronitrile) for evaluation of the compound as a potential new treatment for lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

MD Anderson is planning to use in vivo and in vitro methods to investigate specific pathways, gene expression, mechanism of action, and apoptotic activity of Kevetrin in a range of concentrations and time points in both mutant and wild-type p53 myeloma and lymphoma cell lines. Studies are also planned to evaluate Kevetrin against models of multiple myeloma cell lines that are resistant to bortezomib, lenalidomide, and other FDA-approved chemotherapies. Additional studies will be conducted evaluating the antitumor activity of Kevetrin when used as a combination therapy with several FDA-approved drugs. MD Anderson will provide funding for these studies of Kevetrin defined by the MTA.

“Currently moving through clinical trials for solid tumors at Harvard’s Dana-Farber Cancer Center, Kevetrin being evaluated for blood cancers at MD Anderson puts our novel drug in the hands of innovative and experienced scientists at two of the most prestigious cancer research centers in the world, bar none,” said Leo Ehrlich, CEO at Cellceutix. “MD Anderson has defined a robust course of study that will provide invaluable insight to the antitumor activity of Kevetrin that will be used to plan for additional clinical trials as we continue to execute our strategy to aim Kevetrin at a broad spectrum of cancer lines.”

Cellceutix describes Kevetrin as “a completely new class of chemistry in medicine” and says that mechanism of action studies showed Kevetrin can affect both wild and mutant types of p53 and also induced apoptosis, characterized by activation of Caspase 3 and cleavage of PARP.

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