Q BioMed and Collaborator Chemveda Life Sciences Enter Agreement for Synthesis and Manufacturing of Liver Cancer Chemotherapeutic
Novel Therapeutic Shows Remarkable Efficacy in HepG2 Cell Lines
cGMP manufacturing to support pre-clinical and clinical programs
NEW YORK, Sept. 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Q BioMed, Inc. (OTCQB: QBIO) and Chemveda Life Sciences are very pleased to announce that after the recent successful chemical synthesis of a unique natural compound that has shown remarkable efficacy as a potential chemotherapy for the treatment of liver cancer, the two companies have formalized a collaboration to continue the work and to scale-up manufacturing of cGMP product for planned pre-clinical testing and clinical trials.
Since February 2017, Q BioMed and Chemveda have been engaged in a joint research program to synthesize uttroside B and several other derivatives. The goal of the program is to study their potential use in clinical trials for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer) as well as other cancers. The original compound was isolated and characterized from the leaves of Solanum nigrum Linn, a plant widely used in traditional medicines.
In a Scientific Reports study, researchers showed that in animal models, uttroside B was ten times more cytotoxic to the HepG2 liver cancer cell line than sorafenib, the only drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for liver cancer at the time and the current first line treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma. Uttroside B drastically reduced tumors in mice bearing human liver cancer xenografts. In addition, in pre-clinical experiments, uttroside B induced cytotoxicity in all liver cancer cell lines and researchers were able to confirm its biological safety, both by in vitro and in vivo studies. Q BioMed is awaiting confirmatory cell line efficacy data from the synthesized drug product and its derivatives.