Amazing Science
Zeroing in on a New Therapy
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Scott Kachlany, PhD, has gotten one step closer to realizing his dream of a new treatment for leukemia and autoimmune diseases that will be gentler than chemotherapy and other drugs. Leukothera®, a product developed at his company, Actinobac Biomed, Inc., is in preclinical trials, or the last phase before human testing.
During preclinical trials a potential new drug goes through rigorous assessments. Using rodents and monkeys, Kachlany tested Leukothera's® toxicity to determine at what point it begins having adverse effects on the body. He explored its stability, or the amount of time it takes for the drug to lose potency, and its pharmacokinetics, or how long it lasts in the body. And finally, the scientist studied the potential new drug's pharmacodynamics, or its interactions with the body and how quickly it reaches its target. Kachlany did the testing on healthy animals and on animals with leukemia. He quickly points out that none of the subjects were harmed during the testing.
Kachlany has been working on his therapy for three years. While investigating the bacterium Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans (Aa) he discovered that leukotoxin, a protein secreted by Aa specifically targets malignant and hyper-inflammatory white blood cells. After demonstrating that leukotoxin effectively destroys cancerous and diseased white cells in vitro and in a mouse model, he began looking at using it as a therapeutic agent in some leukemias and lymphomas. That's when he founded Actinobac Biomed, Inc. and Leukothera® was born. His most recent studies have shown that depleting diseased white blood cells with Leukothera® seems to be successful in treating psoriasis and other inflammatory diseases. And Leukothera® in combination with such widely used drugs as etoposide, mitoxantrone, daunorubicin, busulfan and imatinib killed leukemia cells much more effectively than when these drugs were used alone.
"The biological mechanism of Leukothera® differs from that of other cancer drugs," he explains. "Because it does not affect the healthy white blood cells, targeting only malignant and/or inflammatory white blood cells involved in disease, it doesn't cause harsh side effects. We believe that including it in blood cancer treatment protocols may be highly effective."
Actinobac Biomed, Inc.
was founded in 2009 with
financial backing from
Foundation Venture Capital
Group, LLC, an independent
organization that invests
exclusively in research at
UMDNJ by funding new life
science companies. The
company has exclusively
licensed the rights to develop
Leukothera® as a therapeutic
agent for the treatment of
hematologic malignancies,
autoimmune and inflammatory
diseases, and HIV infection.
— Merry Sue Baum