The charity Cancer Research UK announced this week that it has started work on its first clinical research programme in a new partnership arrangement that enables it to “borrow” candidate drugs that have been shelved by drug companies so it can further explore their potential.
The cancer research charity and its commercial arm, Cancer Research Technology, is starting the programme with the clinical development of a tyrosine kinase inhibitor, AZD0424, provided by the drug company AstraZeneca.
Under the terms of the agreement, which is called a clinical development partnership, the charity will conduct early clinical trials at no cost to the company. If the drug looks promising, the company retains the option to develop and market the drug, but the charity will get a share of any resulting revenue (BMJ 2006;332:1112; doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7550.1112).
Dr Keith Blundy, chief executive of Cancer Research Technology (CRT), said: “The signing of our first deal in the clinical development partnership programme demonstrates how the charity and CRT can work with industry to provide innovative solutions that advance cancer discoveries and drugs towards the patient.”
Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have to prioritise which drugs they take into clinical development, Dr Blundy explained. “This, inevitably, leaves potentially effective treatments on companies’ shelves.”
AZD0424 is expected to enter phase I trials—initial trials in healthy volunteers to determine safety and pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic profiles—in the next 18 months.
The partnership scheme is prioritising drugs that act by mechanisms that have been shown to be important in cancer in laboratory and animal models. These are unlikely to be conventional cytotoxic drugs but more likely to be agents targeting specific receptors or proteins.
AZD0424, inhibits tyrosine kinase, an enzyme that provides a central switch mechanism in signaling cell growth and division. Several tyrosine kinases are activated in cancer cells, causing uncontrolled cell growth and division. Inhibiting tyrosine kinase represents a rational approach to cancer treatment, by blocking the mechanism leading to uncontrolled cell growth. A number of tyrosine kinase inhibitors have already been approved as anti-cancer agents.
Dr Blundy said that negotiations are under way for several other drugs to be developed in the clinical development partnership programme. Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, said, “Increasing the number of new treatments for cancer patients is one of Cancer Research UK’s key goals. Opening up a seam of previously unmined but promising new anti-cancer drugs through the clinical development partnership programme will be instrumental in achieving this.”
