Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

Re: MNTA’s heparin-based cancer drug (M402)

The idea underlying M402 is simple: Heparins have strong anti-angiogenic properties, but unfractionated heparin and LMWH’s such as Lovenox don’t work as cancer drugs because the doses required to be effective for anti-angiogenesis would cause patients to bleed to death.

MNTA has thus designed M402 to retain heparin’s anti-angiogenic effect without its anticoagulation. This goal has been sought using the same techniques used to design M118: mixing and matching the various constituents of unfractionated heparin using MNTA’s proprietary restriction enzymes and informatics tools until the desired properties are achieved.