Critical Outcome Technologies Inc announced today that the company was selected by the International Trade Branch and the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade in partnership with the Ontario BioScience Industry Organization to participate in a Trade Mission to BioPartnering North America in Vancouver, Canada taking place February 27 - March 1, 2011. BioPartnering North America is one of the premier annual international pharmaceutical partnering events.
COTI is one of five Ontario-based human health bioscience companies selected to participate in this Trade Mission and as a result has arranged a number of one-on-one meetings with pharmaceutical and drug development organizations. The objective of these meetings is to present compelling data on COTI’s potentially first-in-class and best-in-class Akt2 inhibitor for oncology, 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 also be delivering a presentation at the conference highlighting the scientific merit and commercial potential of COTI-2. COTI’s presentation will occur on Monday, February 28, 2011 at 3:15pm PST in the West Meeting Room 216 at the Vancouver Convention Centre. COTI will be represented by Dr Wayne Danter, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and Mr Michael Barr, Vice President of Business Development and Marketing.
“We are delighted to participate in the Trade Mission to BioPartnering North America and to be given the opportunity to share with a targeted audience the continued progress of our lead candidate, COTI-2,” said Dr Danter, CEO of COTI. “This new data will stimulate further discussions as we continue to evaluate our options pertaining to a licensing deal for COTI-2.”
COTI-2 is a novel small molecule that acts by inhibiting Akt/PKB (Protein kinase B) phosphorylation that leads to caspase-9 activation in cancer cells resulting in tumour cell death. COTI-2 has demonstrated greater selectivity as well as an improved safety profile and pharmacokinetics in comparison to other Akt inhibitors. COTI-2 is easily synthesized and has good in vitro and in vivo efficacy against multiple human 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. COTI is currently evaluating partners to share in the risk/reward of COTI-2 development via a licensing agreement.
Critical Outcome Technologies Inc
