BLR Bio, an early stage biotech company in RFU’s Helix 51 biomedical incubator, released new data on its novel cancer therapy this spring at the 7th annual Labroots Drug Discovery and Development conference. The data points to a promising strategy to boost the effectiveness of existing drugs in pancreatic cancer and other solid-tumor cancers.
The new findings are based on a long-term research relationship between the company and oncology researchers at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan and Bergamo, Italy, and follow work published with that team in the journal Cells in 2020.
The current study, “BLR-100: Can a Novel Tumor Stroma Targeting Agent Reduce Chemotherapy Load as a Potential Effective Combination Therapy?” demonstrates that the use of BLR’s compound — BLR-100 — could provide similar efficacy to a doubling of the dose of existing chemotherapy without increasing side effects of these therapeutics, which often impact patient quality of life during treatment.
According to the American Cancer Society, some 66,000 persons in the U.S. are diagnosed annually with pancreatic cancer, a disease with a very low survival rate that is projected to take 51,000 lives in 2024.