Prescient Therapeutics has Two New Patents Granted to Protect Lead Asset

31st August 2015, ASX Announcement

Prescient Therapeutics (ASX:PTX), a clinical stage oncology company, has substantially bolstered its intellectual property portfolio with two new US patents granted to protect its lead asset PTX-200.

The first patent, US Patent 9,101,641, covers Prescient’s method for treating patients with tumours that overexpress AKT kinase, a key molecule in the oncogenic AKT signaling pathway.

Prescient’s lead drug PTX-200 is a novel small molecule that works by blocking the AKT pathway, and inhibiting tumour growth.

High AKT expression is associated with a poor prognosis, resistance to chemotherapy and shortened survival times in a range of cancers. Trials of PTX-200 are currently underway in the United States in patients with breast and ovarian cancers.

Further expanding the company’s IP portfolio is granted US Patent No. 9,115,162, which covers a propriety method for identifying and treating cancer patient with enhances sensitivity to PTX-200 through a direct measurement of AKT levels in the patients’s tumour. This patents further strengthens Prescient’s focus on “personalised medicine” whereby patients are selected based on their tumour blueprint and treated with a specific drug that targets such blueprint, hence increasing likelihood that a patient will respond to the drug. Personalised or tailored medicine is the way of the future, breaking the “one size fits all “approach to drug treatment that has seen many failures in the past.

To read the full announcement, please click here.