Sorrento Therapeutics Inc. a late-stage clinical oncology company developing new treatments for cancer and its associated pain, announced that the U.S. Office of Orphan Products Development at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the transfer of sponsorship of the Orphan Drug Designation for intrathecal resiniferatoxin (RTX) in the treatment of intractable pain in end-stage disease from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research to Sorrento. “This is an important milestone as it allows us to rapidly advance RTX towards registration,” said Henry Ji, president and CEO of Sorrento. “Sorrento is currently working with the NIH under a cooperative research agreement to conduct an ongoing Phase 1/2 trial of RTX for the treatment of intractable pain in advanced cancer (clinicaltrials.gov identifier: NCT00804154). We intend to file the Investigational New Drug (IND) application and commence a pivotal Phase 2 study in 2015 with this promising product candidate.”
Preliminary data demonstrating clinically meaningful reductions in pain from the current NIH trial were presented at the 39th Annual Regional Anesthesia and Acute Pain Meeting of the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine and the 33rd Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Pain Society. The primary investigator for the NIH trial, John Heiss, branch chair and neurosurgery residency program director Surgical Neurology Branch, National Institutes of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, said “Resiniferatoxin has the potential to be a significant treatment option for the severe unmet need associated with the treatment of intractable pain in cancer patients.”
RTX is a non-opioid-based pain treatment with a unique mechanism of action. It is an ultrapotent TRPV1 agonist which is highly selective for the TRPV1 receptor. Stimulating TRPV1 leads to calcium influx-induced apoptosis or selective ablation of A-delta and C fiber neurons which overexpress the receptor. A single intraspinal injection of RTX is expected to permanently block the transmission of pain signals without affecting normal sensation or motor control or causing sedation and cognitive impairment which may result from high dose opioid therapy.
Date: May 13, 2014
Source: Sorrento Therapeutics
Filed Under: Drug Discovery
