Jun 1 2012
Tau Therapeutics LLC, a pharmaceutical company developing T-type calcium
channel inhibitors for the treatment of solid tumors, announced today
that it has opened enrollment for a Phase Ib clinical trial with the
National Cancer Institute's Adult Brain Tumor Consortium (ABTC) using
the company's first product candidate mibefradil. The trial will
introduce a new therapeutic approach to patients with recurrent
high-grade glioma.
This dose escalation trial will evaluate the safety and pharmacokinetics
of mibefradil when sequentially administered with temozolomide - a novel
proprietary approach Tau calls Interlaced Therapy™. In Interlaced
Therapy™, mibefradil has the potential to synchronize the division of
tumor cells and thereby significantly increase their sensitivity to
subsequent treatment with chemotherapy.
"The ABTC has chosen to collaborate with Tau because Interlaced Therapy™
nicely fits with the primary objective of our consortium - to test
promising new approaches for the treatment of glioblastomas," said Dr.
Stuart A. Grossman, Co-Director of the ABTC. "We look forward to the
valuable information this trial will provide."
"This Phase Ib study is the first step toward developing T-type calcium
channel blockers as a new class of compounds for the treatment of
cancer," said Dr. Lloyd S. Gray, Vice President of Scientific Discovery
at Tau Therapeutics. "When used in Interlaced Therapy™, we believe that
mibefradil and other T-type calcium channel inhibitors will amplify the
cancer killing effect of current chemotherapies thereby offering an
improvement over standard treatments."
The trial will commence at several ABTC sites including Johns Hopkins
University, Henry Ford Health System, Emory University, University of
Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh, and Wake Forest University.
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