HemoShear completes first-phase development of novel cancer drug discovery platform

HemoShear today announced that it has completed the first phase of development of a novel cancer drug discovery platform that replicates human tumor biology and responds to clinically-relevant drug concentrations. Funded by a contract with the NCI, HemoShear is developing a series of tumor models that recreate a wide variety of cancers for discovery of new drugs.

Using their new platform, HemoShear was able to successfully replicate human therapeutic response to Cisplatin, a drug approved to treat non-small cell lung carcinomoa (NSCLC), at a therapeutically-relevant concentration. Similarly, HemoShear evaluated two other drugs currently in clinical studies and confirmed a therapeutic response.

When evaluated in traditional cell culture systems and mouse studies, the same dose of Cisplatin does not show a response. HemoShear's findings reinforce the need to test cancer drug candidates under more human-relevant tumor conditions.

"Nearly 95% of all cancer drugs entering clinical trials fail because of toxicity or lack of efficacy. A major contributor to this dismal failure rate can be attributed to the inability of traditional models to uncover the underlying disease biology and predict efficacy and safety of cancer drug candidates," said Brian Wamhoff, Ph.D., Vice President of R&D and Co-founder of HemoShear. "With our novel approach to recreating the tumor microenvironment, we have demonstrated a major step toward understanding human response to cancer drug treatments."

"Our next step in collaborating with the NCI is to develop models for other tumor types and validate the models with several FDA-approved drugs and combination therapies," Dr. Wamhoff added.

HemoShear's translational tissue systems apply physiological blood flow characteristics to human tissue to restore its in vivo biology, using material from HemoShear's biorepository and interpreting data with cutting edge computational analytics. In Phase I of the NCI-funded program, HemoShear demonstrated that NSCLC tumor structure, biology, and molecular signaling pathways are restored in the HemoShear platform.

"HemoShear's goal is to enter drug discovery collaborations with select pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to identify novel therapeutic approaches. We believe that our best-in-class tumor systems will fundamentally improve success of these drug candidates when they enter the clinic and accelerate the time it takes to get to patients," said Vincent Aurentz, HemoShear's Chief Business Officer. "The results from this phase are very encouraging and allow us to engage potential partners in further development of the tumor microenvironment for specific programs where HemoShear can bring real value."