International Journal of Cancer publishes Bionovo's Bezielle research

Jul 19 2011

Bionovo, Inc. (NASDAQ: BNVI), a pharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of safe and effective treatments for women's health and cancer, today announced the publication of a study of the metabolic effects of its drug candidate, Bezielle, on cancer cells in the International Journal of Cancer.

"This study confirms and expands our earlier understanding of the mechanism of Bezielle cell killing effect," said Uwe Christians, MD, PhD, Professor, iC42 Integrated Solutions in Systems Biology for Clinical Research and Development, University of Colorado, Denver and Bionovo scientific advisory board member. "Bezielle demonstrates incredible selectivity in killing cancer cells while sparing normal cells. It does this by perturbing oxygen metabolism in the cells, from which normal cells can recover, while cancer cells cannot. Using a combined proteomic and metabolomic approach we discovered and confirmed which proteins and enzymes coordinate this selective activity in breast cancer."

The study describes how Bezielle induces selective death in cancer cells using a combined proteomic and metabolomic analysis. The study identified that Bezielle regulates important proteins controlling proliferation and death, such as Jab1, p27, p21 and nucleophosmin and prohibitin. It also regulates important proteins involved in oxidative stress such peroxiredoxin 2, 3 and 6 as well as thioredoxin reductase 1 and glutathione-S-transferase. This activity is seen in cancer cells but not in normal cells. The metabolomic analysis confirmed our observation that Bezielle inhibits energy production in the cells through inhibition of glycolysis, oxidative phosphorylation and lipid metabolism, and results in energetic collapse and therefore cancer cell death. The study concludes that the mechanism of action for Bezielle's cell killing effect is thereby confirmed by the concordance between the proteomic and metabolomic approaches. The paper, entitled, “Bezielle (BZL101)-induced oxidative stress damage followed by redistribution of metabolic fluxes in breast cancer cells: A combined proteomic and metabolomic study,” is available via Bionovo’s website at http://www.bionovo.com/investors/publications and via the International Journal of Cancer website.

"Bezielle research continues to result in important discoveries concerning the selectivity of its action against cancer cells," said Isaac Cohen, OMD, Chairman and CEO of Bionovo, Inc. "It is also important to note that our reverse discovery approach is proving to be powerful, in a time when the pharmaceutical industry is experiencing declining success rate at getting drugs approved. As shown in this study, starting with materials from traditional medicines known to be safe and purported to have efficacy in human diseases, and harnessing modern cutting-edge bioanalytical technologies to investigate and probe into why and how they work, we are able to simultaneously discover and develop drugs with unique novel actions. This approach has dramatically reduced the guess work from our pharmaceutical development."

SOURCE Bionovo, Inc.