Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen! Companies in Copenhagen have a strong focus on medical applications in areas like cancer and diabetes, as well as a lot of activity in industrial biotech. (labiotech.eu)
With all the progress made in oncology therapeutics, cancer drug resistance remains a large unmet clinical need. Shining a spotlight on a biotech company aiming to understand the molecular and cellular processes associated with resistance.
Scandion Oncology, based on Copenhagen, Denmark, have developed a framework for understanding drug resistance. Resistance may be an intrinsic property of some cells or clones in a tumor. Over time upon treatment with a cancer drug, these cells are enriched in the tumor, such that the entire tumor becomes resistant to the treatment (this is called intrinsic resistance).
Another concept of resistance is known as acquired resistance. Here, tumor cells progress through a number of genetic events. Accumulation of defects and genetic changes will eventually make the tumor cells resistant to treatment. Over time and upon treatment, only resistant tumor cells will remain, and the entire tumor will become resistant to treatment.
Led by President and CEO Bo Rode Hansen and COO Maj Hedtjarn, Scandion has two products currently in development. CORIST, for the treatment of drug resistant metastatic colorectal cancer is a clinical Phase II study. The second program, PANTAX, for the treatment of unresectable or metastatic pancreatic cancer is a clinical Phase Ib study. In fact, this month they announced a better-than-expected tolerability of its potential new cancer treatment SCO-101 in the dose-finding PANTAX phase 1b-trial. Thus, dosing is now escalated to higher levels than expected based on the initial findings in the CORIST trial
Using their proprietary DEN50-R platform they can efficiently screen non-resistant and resistant cancer cells simultaneously, providing unprecedented insights into cancer drug resistance mechanisms in a streamlined fashion.
Looking forward to more products from Scandion Oncology to accelerate effective cancer treatments.