SBIR-STTR Award

There is an urgent need for more effective drug delivery agents for treatment of brain tumors which are among the most aggressive and intractable cancers SapC DOPS a nanovesicle composed of saposin C SapC coupled to dioleoylphosphatidylserine DOPS has proven tumor targeting properties which include crossing the blood brain tumor barrier and binding the lipid tumor marker extracellular phosphatidylserine PS It also exhibits antitumor activities in preclinical glioblastoma GBM models We hypothesize that endowing SapC DOPS nanovesicles with a radiolabeled lipophilic reporter will create a novel agent withsuperior efficacy for targeted radionuclide therapy TRT of GBMs Treatment options for GBMs are very limited and standard therapies with radiation and or chemotherapy provide only modest survival benefitswith potential deleterious effects To address these issues we propose to create a novel cancer selective targeted radiolabeled SapC DOPS for TRT of GBMs A unique advantage of MTTI s approach lies in the feedforward therapeutic mechanism of the novel compound radiation exposure is known to increase PS externalization in tumor cells thus leading to enhanced anticancer effects by PS targeted SapC DOPSnanovesicles This proposal is backed by extensive published and unpublished preliminary data the FDA Orphan Drug designation of SapC DOPS and an ongoing clinical phase I trial