- Lung cancer is one of the most commonly occurring tumors in men and women, and it is the common cancer that’s most likely to result in death among all U.S. populations
- Genprex is advancing its trademarked Oncoprex immunogene therapy as a means of bolstering the body’s protein defenses against lung tumor growth
- Clinical trials for Oncoprex are evaluating ways to team it with other targeted therapies and immunotherapies to increase the overall efficacy of the therapies
The war on deadly cancers continues to advance innovative developments in the field of targeted therapies that block the growth of cancer cells by interfering with specific tumor-growing molecules (as opposed to chemotherapy, or cytotoxic therapy, which simply interferes with all rapidly dividing cells). Genprex Inc. (NASDAQ: GNPX) is at the forefront of the battle, testing its trademarked Oncoprex immunogene therapy as a means of combating lung cancers.
Lung cancer is one of the most commonly occurring cancers among all men and women in the United States, and it is the common cancer that’s most likely to result in death among men and women of all races once it occurs, although death rates have been decreasing in recent years (http://ibn.fm/MDIqa). Overall societal lifestyle changes and advances in medical technologies have made cancers more survivable than they once might have been.
Genprex continues to focus on developing new treatments for cancer as part of its mission to develop cutting-edge gene therapies to improve patient outcomes. Targeted gene therapies have resulted in a vast amount of drug research in recent years, because gene therapies are expected to be more effective than older forms of treatments and less harmful to normal cells. Targeted therapies and immunotherapies empower the body’s own natural immune defenses against tumor development, either by adding or restoring deficient proteins or by attacking “checkpoint” molecules that inhibit the body’s cancer-fighting proteins.
Drugs established through gene research have often found only temporary effectiveness, as patients develop a resistance to them. This has led to an emerging trend to combat resistance through combination therapy in which a number of different therapeutic agents and differing modes of action team up to battle resistance-conferring mutations (http://ibn.fm/TQj3F).
Genprex’s Oncoprex therapy is an example of this trend, working in combination with targeted therapies such as U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs Tarceva and Iressa and immunotherapies such as FDA-approved drugs Opdivo and Yervoy to fight non-small cell lung cancers, which account for about 85 percent of all lung cancers (http://ibn.fm/h5sI0).
“Oncoprex is synergistic with those drugs, meaning that the combination is more effective than either drug alone. We believe that by combining Oncoprex with targeted therapies and immunotherapies, we can extend the benefit of these approved lung cancer drugs into the large majority of patients who do not now benefit from them, either because the patients’ tumors do not have the molecular profiles that indicate effectiveness of those drugs, or because the patients have developed resistance to those drugs after receiving them for some period of time,” the company’s website states.
Oncoprex’s phase I and II clinical-stage trial therapies are designed to administer cancer-fighting genes by encapsulating them into nanoscale hollow spheres called nanovesicles, which are then administered intravenously and taken up by tumor cells where they express proteins that are missing or found in low quantities (http://ibn.fm/w3bUK). The company has a portfolio of 30 issued patents and two more pending, and it is also conducting pre-clinical research to help identify which patients will be most likely to benefit from its gene therapies and which additional cancer drugs will be the most synergistic with Oncoprex.
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.Genprex.com
