Curis, a drug development company focused on developing proprietary targeted medicines for cancer treatment, announced today an article regarding CUDC-907 has been published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research. CUDC-907 is an orally-available small molecule drug candidate under development by Curis, and it is designed to simultaneously inhibit PI3K and HDAC. Several members of Curis’ scientific team authored the article, titled “Cancer network disruption by a single molecule inhibitor targeting both histone deacetylase (HDAC) activity and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling.” The article will be published in the print version of the journal in the near future.
“We are encouraged by the publication of CUDC-907 data in Clinical Cancer Research. We believe that these data support our development strategy for this molecule, under which we plan to initiate a Phase I clinical trial in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma or multiple myeloma later this year,” stated Dan Passeri, Curis President and Chief Executive Officer. “We developed CUDC-907 to target PI3K as well as HDAC, which is known to induce multiple epigenetic modifications affecting signaling networks and also to act synergistically with PI3K inhibitors. The objective of CUDC-907 is to provide for a broad disruption of several pathways that are implicated in hematologic malignancies in order to achieve a better outcome for patients.”
The focus of the article was CUDC-907’s potential for continued development in cancer treatment, specifically in the treatment of hematological cancers. CUDC-907 has shown potent anticancer activity in xenograft models and cultured cancer cells, as well as evidence that it may offer therapeutic benefits for multiple cancer types through broad signaling network disruption. A specific example of these promising capabilities is data showing that CUDC-907 durably inhibits both the primary P13K-AKT-mTOR pathway and also many compensatory signaling molecules which cancer cells often utilize to outmaneuver the mechanisms of single target kinase inhibitors, including RAF, MEK, MAPK, and STAT-3, among others. The scientists at Curis believe that CUDC-907 could possibly deliver improved therapeutic benefit with its simultaneous, sustained disruption of multiple signaling pathways.
Curis’ discovery and development efforts are focused on building a portfolio of small molecule network-targeted inhibitors against a wide range of cancer types. The leading compounds within Curis’ research and development programs are designed to inhibit one or more cancer targets, including EGFR, Her2, and PI3K, as well as the inhibition of histone deacetylase, or HDAC, a validated non-kinase cancer target. Each target combination is chosen for its potential of mechanistic synergy, offering a differentiated, potential breakthrough approach to cancer therapy, intended to disrupt cancer resistance networks.
For more information, please visit www.curis.com
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