Novogrn Announces Anisina Confirmed as Effective Anti-Cancer Agent in Animal Studies

US-Australian drug discovery company, Novogen

, today announced that it has confirmed that drug candidate, Anisina, is an effective monotherapy against human melanoma in an animal model. The Company announced recently that Anisina was a potent cytotoxic in vitro against human melanoma cells, and in particular that this effect was unaffected by the mutational status of the melanoma cells, particularly the common Braf gene status. The purpose of the pre-clinical study was to provide evidence that this potent anti-cancer effect could be transferred to the whole animal. Such evidence is required to justify conducting human clinical studies in adults with solid cancers such as melanoma. The Company previously has announced the effectiveness of Anisina as a monotherapy in mice bearing human neuroblastoma tumors, thereby justifying taking it into clinical trials in children and juveniles with solid cancers such as neuroblastoma. Taken together, the two results confirm the potential clinical benefit of this drug across both adult and paediatric cancers. In the current study, highly chemo-resistant human melanoma cells were grown in athymic mice and the animals treated either orally or intravenously with Anisina. Both dosage forms were equally effective. Novogen Anti-Tropomyosin Program Director, Justine Stehn PhD, said, "We are pleasantly surprised by the degree of anti-tumor activity of this drug candidate on its own. We had always seen the anti-tropomyosin technology as being an adjunct therapy for the more commonly used anti-mitotic drugs. The rationale behind its development was to destroy that half of a cancer cell's cytoskeleton that the anti-mitotic drugs didn't target. We reasoned that destabilising the entire cytoskeleton would achieve a much higher level of anti-cancer effect than that coming from targeting either half alone. And, indeed, that is what we see. Anisina used in combination with anti-mitotic drug, vincristine, increases the anti-cancer potency of vincristine 20-fold."