UT Health San Antonio physician and researcher Dr. Daruka Mahadevan has received two business grants from the National Cancer Institute to develop two innovative cancer-treatment drugs in partnership with San Diego drug maker SignalRx Pharmaceuticals for a human clinical trial.
Mahadevan is division chief of hematology and medical oncology at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and Mays Cancer Center.
The two Small Business Technology Transfer grants from the National Cancer Institute, which total about $300,000, are intended to bolster cooperation between nonprofit institutions and small businesses with an ultimate goal of commercialization.
Mahadevan, as well as medicinal chemist Joseph Garlich and structural biologist Guillermo Morales from SignalRx, will be working on the further development of new inhibitor drugs that can target multiple cancer proteins at once.
The two new drugs will undergo preclinical trials for lung, pancreatic and breast cancer, as well as lymphoma. After laboratory studies are complete, the team will seek approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the first human clinical trials of the drug.
Ruben Mesa, executive director of Mays Cancer Center, noted that UT Health San Antonio hopes to be on the cutting edge of cancer-drug development for the future of both the Mays Cancer Center and the community at large.
Mahadevan, who also serves as associate director for clinical research at UT Health San Antonio and Mays Cancer Center as well as director of the Institute for Drug Development, said that targeting two or three cancer proteins in a tumor at once using just one small-molecule inhibitor drug without harming normal tissue is a groundbreaking approach in cancer therapeutics. He noted that the collaboration with Signal Rx will make an enormous difference in patient outcomes.
"With these two grants, we can unlock the potential of dual- or triple-targeted anti-cancer drugs that could significantly improve the lives of pediatric and adult cancer patients," Mahadevan said.
