Abdalla Saad, (608) 358-9655, abdalla.saad@co-drx.com
Madison – Co-D Therapeutics, a University of Wisconsin-Madison spinoff, is developing a three-drug cocktail to battle a wide range of cancers. The first target for Co-D is angiosarcoma, a rare and lethal cancer that arises from blood vessels.
The company’s submicroscopic package contains paclitaxel, a standard cancer drug, combined with two other drugs designed to reduce the resistance that often develops against chemotherapy drugs.
The triple-threat product was invented by two of Co-D’s co-founders, chief scientific officer Glen Kwon, a professor of pharmaceutical science at UW-Madison, and chief medical officer Kevin Kozak, a radiation oncologist now at Mercy Health System in Janesville.
Kwon has been working on new drug carriers and combination cancer treatments for more than 20 years; Kozak is an expert on angioscarcoma.
Four patents on the candidate drug, called Triolimus, have been issued to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF).
The Triolimus package is a double-layer structure called a micelle that is only 40 nanometers in diameter – about 1/200 the diameter of a human hair. Each individual component of Triolimus has been tested in humans and several have Food and Drug Administration approval.
Although paclitaxel and related cancer drugs derived from the Pacific yew tree are in widespread use, they usually require a toxic solvent that can cause dangerous anaphylactic shock in patients. The micelle technology eliminates the solvent and allows the simultaneous administration of other insoluble drugs.
If the product works against angiosarcoma, it could be used against breast, lung and other common cancers that are now treated with paclitaxel.
READ MORE AT http://news.wisc.edu/madison-
