Innovation Pharmaceuticals Inc (IPIX)

[sox040713]

I shall let David Lane, the person who discovered p53, respond to your post.

Q: How close do you think we are to being able to restore p53’s function in cancer patients? Do you think this alone will cure cancer in these patients, or will the restoration need to be combined with other therapeutics?

A: We’re looking at ways to turn p53 into a target for drug therapy. We have two major areas that we’re exploring. One is a way to turn the p53 response on in the 50 percent of human tumors where the gene is still intact.

There are already some molecules in clinical trials coming from that area of research. These early clinical trials are encouraging, and many major pharmaceutical companies are now working on this target, which we first helped to define as “druggable” over 16 years ago.

The second area we’re focused on is trying to target those tumors where p53 gene function is lost. We’re currently investigating a variety of different approaches there – one, and perhaps the most challenging, is trying to get the mutant protein to work again.

This work is not yet ready for clinical trials. We are still slaving away at the bench really, though one early molecule that works this way is being tried in a very small group of patients in Sweden.

David Lane did not mention the need to combine with other therapeutics. It is all about p53, p53, p53! According to him, “nearly every tumor has an affected or moderated p53 pathway”. 50% of cancers have mutated p53 and the others have a damaged p53 pathway, such as AML or melanoma.

Guess what? Kevetrin activates both wild type p53 AND degrades mutant p53. Seems to me that Kevetrin can be a stand-alone drug against multiple tumor types and there are plenty of pre-clinical data to support that.

I was saving this interview for you because I know you will come back with the same old statement again. What took you so long? =)

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20130722/p53-and-cancer-research-an-interview-with-Professor-Sir-David-Lane-Scientific-Director-of-the-Ludwig-Institute-for-Cancer-Research.aspx