Advanced Cancer Therapeutics secures $10M in investments

Advanced Cancer Therapeutics (ACT), a for-profit private company dedicated to bringing new anti-cancer therapies to market, today announced that it has secured $10 million in investments from high net-worth individuals and institutions. This round of investment, which closed six months ahead of the company's year-end goal, will provide ACT additional capital to continue its development and commercialization of potentially lifesaving therapeutics for cancer patients.

"This early closing is a testament to our unique relationship with the University of Louisville's James Graham Brown Cancer Center to fast-track their innovations, and the resulting strong drug discovery pipeline now in place," said Randall Riggs, president and CEO of ACT. "We are proud that all of this round's investors are Kentucky-based which not only helps build regional sustainability but allows ACT to be a catalyst for the future growth of biotech in the Commonwealth."

ACT's top priority programs include novel small molecule compound inhibitors for PKFKFB3 and Choline Kinase, and a novel DNA quadruplex referred to as PU27, which are summarized below:

• PFKFB3: High glucose consumption is commonly observed in cancer cells. As PFKFB3 is the enzyme involved in the first irreversible step of glycolysis, ACT synthesized over 100 rationally designed inhibitors of this protein. Scientific evidence suggests that inhibitors of the PFKFB3 enzyme block glucose uptake in cancer cells therefore inhibiting cancer cells proliferation and tumor growth.
• Choline Kinase: Choline Kinase, the enzyme responsible for the phosphorylation of choline into phosphocholine, is over expressed in most solid tumors including lung, breast, ovarian, brain and prostate cancers. ACT's medicinal chemists have developed over 150 rationally designed, potent compound inhibitors that inhibit choline kinase enzymatic activity, cell proliferation and tumor growth in xenograft studies.
• PU27 is a sequence specific DNA oligonucleotide that comprises a part of the c-Myc oncogene. PU27 inhibits cancer cell proliferation and appears well tolerated from a recently completed preliminary animal toxicology study. Furthermore, tumor growth inhibition studies in xenograft models demonstrated that PU27 significantly inhibited tumor growth.