Armour Therapeutics discovers synergies between prostate cancer treatment and conventional chemotherapy to treat aggressive tumours
Armour’s anti-hormonal therapy, AT-001, could help improve survival rates in prostate cancer Toronto, May 13, 2014 – Biopharma company Armour Therapeutics has published exciting new findings for the treatment of hormone refractory prostate cancer.
Data from animal studies show that combination therapy of docetaxel, the current standard-of-care chemotherapy for the management of advanced prostate cancer, along with Armour’s AT-001, inhibited androgen-independent prostate tumor growth by up to 98% compared to controls. “Conceivably, combination therapy with AT-001 could enable lowering docetaxel dosing regimens in the clinic, thereby reducing the concomitant toxicity associated with chemotherapy”, says Dr. Anton Neschadim, Director of Drug Development at Armour Therapeutics and lead author on the study.
“Combination treatment of Armour’s AT-001 with docetaxel may either allow for using less docetaxel or enable a longer treatment cycle to achieve the same efficacy and lower side-effects and toxicity” said Dr. John Trachtenberg, Director of the Prostate Cancer Centre at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, and a co-author on the study.
Armour is developing a first-in-class anti-hormonal drug for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer, which occurs once tumors have become resistant to conventional drugs that are designed to block the action of androgen hormones. In preclinical studies, Armour’s lead compound, AT-001, has been shown to impair human prostate tumour growth, making it an alternative candidate course of treatment once patients have exhausted their options with the current leading anti-hormonal therapies on the market.
“AT-001 is a relaxin receptor antagonist designed to maintain an anti-androgen effect in patients developing resistance to currently marketed anti-hormonals. In addition, by blocking the relaxin hormone pathway, it may reduce tumour growth, impair angiogenesis, constrict tumoral blood flow, and reduce the risk of metastasis,” says Dr. Josh Silvertown, CEO and Founder of Armour Therapeutics Inc, and senior author on the study.
The study entitled, “Relaxin receptor antagonist AT-001 synergizes with docetaxel in androgen-independent prostate xenografts” was published in Endocrine-Related Cancer, the premier global journal for covering all aspects of basic, translational and clinical research on hormones and cancer. An abstract of the paper can be found here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1530/ERC-14-0088.
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