Critical Outcome Technologies Inc announced today that representatives of the company will meet with several prospective partners who have expressed interest in its lead oncology drug candidate COTI-2 at Biotech Showcase. Biotech Showcase is a pharmaceutical partnering conference held concurrent to J.P. Morgan's 29th annual Healthcare Conference taking place in San Francisco, California on January 10-12, 2011.
The objective of these meetings is to present compelling data on COTI’s potentially first-in-class and best-in-class oncology compound, COTI-2, and to further discussions surrounding a licensing deal. During preclinical testing, COTI-2 has demonstrated greater selectivity, an improved safety profile and superior pharmacokinetics in comparison to other Akt inhibitors.
COTI will meet with several prospective partners including executives from major pharmaceutical organizations at Biotech Showcase.
“We are delighted with the continued development of our lead oncology candidate, COTI-2,” said Dr. Wayne Danter, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of COTI. “The results generated to date combined with the novel target and selectivity for Akt2 specifically are expected to further discussions in our evaluation of options for a licensing agreement.” COTI will be represented at Biotech Showcase by Dr Wayne Danter, President and CEO and Mr. Michael Barr, Vice President of Business Development and Marketing.
COTI-2 is a novel small molecule that acts by inhibition of Akt/PKB (Protein kinase B) phosphorylation that leads to caspase-9 activation in cancer cells resulting in apoptosis or programmed cell death.
In preclinical testing, COTI-2 has demonstrated greater selectivity, an improved safety profile and superior pharmacokinetics in comparison to other Akt inhibitors.
COTI-2 is easily synthesized and has good in vitro and in vivo efficacy against multiple cancers including small cell lung, non-small cell lung, colon, brain, ovarian, endometrial, triple negative breast and pancreatic. COTI-2 test results show it to be highly effective as a single agent therapy and as a combination therapy in a number of animal models of human cancers.
COTI-2 differs from other cancer treatments in that other treatments involve the killing of healthy growing and dividing cells in the body resulting in significant toxic side effects while COTI-2 appears to target and destroy cancer cells only and has demonstrated low toxicity in normal human cells compared to human cancer cells.
The combined scientific evidence indicates that COTI-2 is an ideal agent for combination therapy with current standard agents for a number of cancers.
Critical Outcome Technologies Inc
