Bionomics files key U.S. patents relating to cancer drug target BNO69

May 9 2005

Bionomics Limited announced today that it has filed further patent applications in key markets (including the US) relating to its proprietary cancer drug target BNO69.

The role of BNO69 as a target for inhibiting angiogenesis (blood vessel formation) was published late last year in the prestigious scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS) and more recently in the scientific journal Physiological Genomics. Recent clinical successes with drugs which inhibit angiogenesis, a key factor in the growth of solid cancers, have intensified the interest of pharmaceutical companies in this area.

More recent findings indicate that BNO69 and molecules that silence its expression may have therapeutic utility in directly targeting cancer cells. Cell-based assays demonstrated that BNO69 silencing molecules curtail the tumorigenic behaviour exhibited by a number of tumour cell types, including, breast and colon cancer. Previously reported animal studies have shown that molecules which silence BNO69 have a profound effect on tumour growth and that BNO69 is potentially an effective drug target for treating breast cancer. In those studies, breast cancer cells that were treated with BNO69 gene-silencing molecules showed a significantly reduced capacity in forming solid tumours in mice. Solid tumours arising from cells treated with BNO69 silencing molecules were over 75% smaller compared to tumours arising from untreated cells. Bionomics has confirmed this data in repeat studies with observed tumour size reductions as high as 94%.