Oscotec said on the 7th that it created a new Platform Technology team in its lab to develop platform technology to overcome resistance to anticancer drugs.
The newly launched Platform Technology team will systematically explore and verify the causes of resistance that arise during cancer treatment and related targets. Based on this, the company plans to build a next-generation platform for developing anti-resistance anticancer drugs.
In particular, Oscotec plans to observe in real time how cancer cells acquire resistance to existing anticancer drugs and to identify new anti-resistance targets using artificial intelligence (AI)-based single-cell image analysis technology. To that end, the company recently hired Dr. Grailhe Regis, who led an image-based efficacy screening platform for about 10 years at Institut Pasteur Korea, as the head.
Going forward, the company plans to use AI- and systems biology-based analysis to identify the key causes of resistance acquired by cancer cells during treatment and to expand into research to discover new related targets.
Oscotec is currently conducting a phase 1 clinical trial of its anti-resistance anticancer drug candidate OCT-598. In May last year, it received approval for an investigational new drug (IND) application for phase 1 from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and in November of the same year from the Ministery of Food and Drug Safety. The target indications are solid tumors, including lung, breast, prostate, gastric, and head and neck cancers, and in Korea, the first patient dosing began in December last year.
OCT-598 is a novel drug candidate that simultaneously inhibits EP2 and EP4, receptors for prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), an inflammatory signaling molecule secreted by cancer cells.
PGE2 is involved in inflammation control and tissue repair in normal tissues, but in the cancer treatment setting, it is known to help residual cancer cells survive and evade immunity. Oscotec aims to block this signaling pathway with OCT-598 to enhance the efficacy and durability of existing cancer therapies.
Along with this, Oscotec is also developing a total of four pipelines related to anti-resistance anticancer drugs, including ONC1–3. The company plans to continue discovering new targets specialized in the principles of cancer resistance with the Platform Technology team at the center and to expand into pipelines applicable to various cancer types and combination therapies.
Chief Executive Yoon Tae-young of Oscotec said, "Over the past two years of research, we completed proof-of-concept for resistance to anticancer drugs," and added, "We created the Platform Technology team to fully expand and apply this and to take the lead in the new therapeutic modality of anti-resistance anticancer drugs."
Yoon added, "We plan to build a customized target discovery platform that aims at the key causes of resistance arising from existing standard cancer treatments," and "Ultimately, we will develop combination therapies that suppress the emergence of resistance as much as possible and present a new cancer treatment paradigm."