Akinion Pharmaceuticals AB, a Karolinska Development AB portfolio company, announced that the article ”The novel tyrosine kinase inhibitor AKN-028 has significant antileukemic activity in cell lines and primary cultures of acute myeloid leukemia” by Eriksson A, et al., has been published online in Blood Cancer Journal at www.nature.com/bcj.
AKN-028 is a targeted, orally available, small molecule FLT3 and cKIT kinase inhibitor currently in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial. The published article describes the preclinical activity of AKN-028 on cell lines and primary tumor cells. Its anti-leukemic effect on all types of primary acute myeloid leukemia (AML) samples tested, including chemotherapy resistant tumors, clearly differentiates AKN-028 from other FLT3 inhibitors. The reported possible sequence dependent synergy of AKN-028 with standard AML drugs supports a future development of AKN-028 in combination therapies in addition to the use as a single drug treatment.
About 42,000 new cases of AML are diagnosed in the US, EU and Japan each year and deaths from AML total about 30,000. The 5-year survival rate is only 34% for adults aged below 65 and 4% for those aged 65 or older. Current treatments include chemotherapy and bone marrow transplantation, but no targeted treatments are approved yet.
Dr. Carl Harald Janson, CEO, Akinion Pharmaceuticals stated, “The results described in the article clearly differentiates AKN-028 and supports the ongoing clinical trial. In particular the effect seen on chemotherapy resistant tumors could be of significant importance when treating a disease with few therapeutic alternatives.”
Date: August 6, 2012
Source: Akinion Pharmaceuticals AB
Filed Under: Drug Discovery
