Clinical-stage biotech company Noxopharm (ASX: NOX) has announced new data showing how its Sofra technology platform could be leveraged to fight certain types of cancer.
While still in its early days, the company’s research indicates the platform has versatile applications beyond mitigating inflammation in autoimmune and other chronic diseases.
Noxopharm believes the platform could be used to weaponise the immune system when faced with unchecked cancerous growth in the body.
The places the innovative technology — which was granted US patent protection in October — in a key position to unlock the clinical potential of TLR8 activation in immuno-oncology and potentially become a competitive new addition to the global cancer treatment market.
Novel Treatment Approach
Sofra’s breakthrough technology is based upon short nucleic acid sequences — the building blocks of DNA or RNA known as oligonucleotides — to provide a novel treatment approach by acting on specific cells within the body’s own immune system to modulate inflammation at its source.
They work to significantly amplify the activity of the body’s toll-like receptor 8 (TLR8) compared to current cancer drugs in clinical development.
This can in turn enhance the cancer-fighting activity of standard-of-care therapies such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
This combination approach opens up a new opportunity for more potent, controllable, and targeted activation of the immune system against cancer by exploiting a novel mechanism uncovered through in-depth industry studies of TLR8 biology.
Sofra Platform Potential
A recent study conducted by Noxopharm showed that a proprietary TLR8-amplifying oligonucleotide could boost the activity of a clinical-stage small molecule TLR8 agonist more than 200-fold in human skin biopsies, while another study showed a TLR8-amplifying oligonucleotide could increase TLR8 activity almost three-fold in an animal model.
Noxopharm is currently scaling up to test the novel compounds in humanised TLR8 mice and various cancer models.
Chief executive officer Dr Olivier Laczka said the company was encouraged by the potential of the Sofra platform in the cancer space.
“Our deep and novel understanding of how innate immune receptors such as TLR8 are naturally regulated provides a unique advantage in targeting them,” he said.
“With our strong background in oncology and immune-modulating drug development, our data supports a new and different approach to addressing significant unmet needs in cancer treatment, paving the way for a potential and highly disruptive new treatment modality.”
