MMI cancer breakthrough to treat the ‘untreatable’
Published: February 3, 2005
New cancer drugs for currently untreatable tumours could be on the market in three years.
Medical Marketing International Group in Cambridge has announced that its new cancer drugs based on ruthenium have passed independent safety tests and should now go into clinical trials.
David Best, MMI group chairman, said: “Platinum has been the basis for cancer drugs for more than 25 years and it makes a good drug, but there are a few problems, such as kidney damage, and it is not so good with lung cancer.
“Ruthenium, which is also a metal in the ground, is proving to be 14 times more potent, particularly in treating lung cancer.
“And patients need to take less than a tenth of the amount of platinum-based drugs, so there are fewer side effects.”
Ruthenium is not only set to achieve better results in cancers that can already be treated, but it also works in areas such as pancreatic cancer, which is currently untreatable.
Ruthenium as the basis of a new generation of cancer drugs was discovered by research scientists at Edinburgh University.
Oncosense, part of the MMI group, has an exclusive licence to develop the research into drugs, which means the company currently has the field to itself.
As well as taking cancer treatment forward to save lives, Oncosense is looking at a worldwide market worth $42 billion last year.
Platinum-based drugs alone, which have been the most successful to date, saw sales peak at $5 billion before patents expired.
Dr Cliff Elcombe, director of CXR Biosciences, the independent company which has been testing ruthenium compounds, said: “We feel privileged to have been chosen by MMI to carry out the safety studies on what now appears to be an extremely interesting new class of cancer drugs.
“The safety screens that we performed indicate that this new group of cancer therapies has enormous potential.”
Mr Best added that although it would take three to four years for clinical trials to be completed in humans, there was a chance the new drugs could be fast-tracked to help patients with currently untreatable cancers.
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