PDX Pharmaceuticals, an Oregon Health & Science startup, was awarded two grants totaling $4.3 million from the National Cancer Institute.
The awards were given to the biotech company to advance two therapeutic candidates, which are immuno-nanotherapeutics for advanced cancers, said Wassana Yantasee, president and CEO of PDX Pharmaceuticals and a professor of biomedical engineering at OHSU.
Yantasee founded the company out of the OHSU Department of Biomedical Engineering. PDX Pharma has received nearly $8 million in grants over the past couple of years.
Both of the company’s product candidates function by “profoundly engaging and directing the patient’s own immune system to help treat their underlying cancer,” Yantasee said in an announcement.
“First, the immune-nanoparticles directly attack cancer cells to release immune-stimulating tumor antigens. Next, the nanoparticles leverage the synergistic biological effects of their payloads to trigger the patient’s immune cells to generate potent cancer-killing T cells ... that travel throughout the body and attack the patient’s cancer wherever it is found.”
One of the drug candidates, which would target non-small cell lung cancer, received a perfect funding score of 10 from the cancer institute, Yantasee said.
“This proposal addresses an unmet clinical need, since (the disease) represents the leading cause of cancer mortality in the U.S. and only a small subset of patients benefit from immunotherapy,” the scientific review officer wrote. “Thus, effective treatments that could increase the efficacy of immunotherapy in (the disease) are desperately needed. There was unanimous agreement that this is an outstanding application, which, if successful, will represent a significant therapeutic advancement in the field.”
Yantasee said she is raising additional capital from private and angel investors. The company is based at OHSU and has eight employees.
