Another cancer drug breakthrough for Redx

MERSEYSIDE drug development company Redx Pharma has identified a potential new treatment for blood cancers and autoimmune diseases.

The new drug inhibits Bruton’s Tyrosine Kinase (BKT), the enzyme which plays a key role in the development of the illnesses.

Blood cancers include leukaemia such as chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and autoimmune diseases include rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and Sjögren’s syndrome.

The “candidate” drug is the company’s second to be advanced from its innovative development pipeline.

The newly identified novel small molecule inhibitor combines best-in-class potency with distinct selectivity profiles targeted at oncology and autoimmune diseases.

This inhibitor blocks BTK, an essential element of the B-cell receptor signalling pathway. It is expected to be able to be taken orally as a once daily dose and to act without the negative side-effects that other current BTK inhibitors exhibit.

Redx currently has 13 proprietary drug programs in its pipeline, with five having achieved pre-clinical proof of concept, demonstrating superior performance to competitor drugs.

These are used in therapies to treat MRSA, bone tumours, skin, brain, blood, breast, head and neck, and pancreatic cancers.  Redx’s first drug development candidate is a smoothened inhibitor which has potential to treat basal cell carcinoma, the most common form of skin cancer, through topical application.

Redx chief executive Dr Neil Murray said: “We’re delighted to be announcing the second drug candidate to make it through our development pipeline, particularly one which has the potential to play a role in tackling some challenging blood cancers like leukaemia and diseases of the autoimmune system including rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
 
“This drug candidate has the potential to demonstrate efficacy without the highly unpleasant side effects that many existing treatments display.
 
“We have a number of other promising candidates in the pipeline and we’re looking forward to seeing these progress into development in the near future.”

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