Cyclacel in-licenses novel anticancer drug

UK-based biopharmaceutical company Cyclacel has entered into a licensing agreement with Canadian biotech company Lorus Therapeutics that gives Cyclacel exclusive worldwide rights to a Lorus small molecule anticancer drug code-named CYC381 (also known as NC381) and related analogues.

Under the terms of the agreement Lorus will receive an upfront fee, milestones and royalties on product sales.

CYC381, which is currently in preclinical development, is an orally available analogue of antifungal drug clotrimazole. It is a novel agent that has demonstrated potent antitumour activity in vivo against several human tumour xenografts. CYC381 appears to work by a cell cycle-related mechanism arresting cancer cells in the G1 phase of the cell cycle. Lorus licensed rights to CYC381 and its analogues from Harvard Medical School.

As CYC381 is a racemic compound, Cyclacel plans to identify and take into clinical development a single enantiomer if test results continue to be suppor-tive. CYC381's anticancer effects are presumed to result from its inhibition of the initiation of translation (protein synthesis) particularly of cyclins A, E and D1. This property makes CYC381 ideally suited for clinical trials aided by Cyclacel's biomarker technology that is presently used in clinical trials of Cyclacel's own drug candidates, such as CYC202.

Dr Bob Jackson, Cyclacel's executive director of research and development, said: 'CYC381, a racemic mixture of two optical isomers, is profoundly active in a range of tumour models through its inhibition of translation of key cell cycle regulating proteins. We have identified a path to development based on selection of the optimum isomer and development of a biomarker toolkit to support the clinical evaluation when formal preclinical tests are completed.'