Maxim receives $1m payment from Myriad Genetics

San Diego-based Maxim Pharmaceuticals has received a $1m development milestone under an agreement with Myriad Genetics. The milestone is based on the dosing of the first patient in a Phase I clinical program designed to evaluate the safety and pharmacokinetic profile of MPC-6827 in patients with advanced solid tumours.

'We are very pleased with Myriad's progress in the MPC-6827 program and look forward to the Phase 1 study results,' stated Larry Stambaugh, Maxim's chairman and chief executive officer. 'In the meantime we are continuing our efforts to advance other anti-cancer compounds into the clinic, either independently or through additional partnerships, over the next 12 to 18 months. Further, we have recently initiated a new campaign to screen about 60,000 new compounds using our proprietary caspase-3 screening technology, and we hope to discover new lead candidates and molecular targets that hold similar innovative promise as oncology drugs.'

MPC-6827 is being developed by Myriad from a family of anti-cancer analogues discovered by Maxim through its proprietary high-throughput screening system that identifies compounds and molecular targets that induce programmed cell death, or apoptosis. In pre-clinical studies, MPC-6827 was notable in its breadth of activity, demonstrating activity that was better than control using current standard-of-care chemotherapy in xenograft models of breast, pancreas, colon, ovary and prostate cancers. Other lead compounds discovered by Maxim include MX2167, MX2407 (f/n/a MX116407) and MX128504. MX2167 is a novel anticancer agent that targets the transferrin receptor leading to a previously uncharacterised rapid induction of apoptosis in preclinical tumour models. MX2407 is part of a novel class of microtubule inhibitors with vascular targeting activity and strong anti-tumour activity in pre-clinical in vitro and in vivo studies. MX128504 targets a novel intracellular target and shows selectivity for breast and colorectal cancer.