ONA Therapeutics Selects Lead Drug Candidate
Barcelona-based ONA Therapeutics has selected a lead therapeutic candidate, beginning pharmacology and toxicology studies.
The company was founded as a spin off from the Institute of Research in Biomedicine and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies in 2019. Since then, the company has been a contender for The Spinoff Prize 2021 and longlisted for The Spinoff Prize 2023.
ONA Therapeutics was founded to advance an antibody-drg strategy that could blunt the spread of cancer and reduce the burden of metastasis. This was based on research in a lab, where the antibody-drug strategy showed promising results in mice subjects. Following this effort, the company raised €30 million in venture capital funding and spun off into their own dedicated laboratory space.
The selection of a lead candidate has also encouraged the company to begin striving towards clinical trials in the next few years.
Research has required detailing how the therapeutic approach works at a molecular level. They also made a humanised antibody to create the drug candidate ONA-046, which holds promise for treating deadly forms of advanced cancer.
Their lead candidate, ONA-046, is directed against a fatty-acid receptor found on the surface of many cells, including those that drive metastasis. On those cells, the receptor acts as a gullet for fat intake, helping to feed the voracious appetite of cancers in ways that fuel their invasiveness and migration. By cutting off this source of fat, the antibody triggers a metabolic rewiring which proves lethal to cancer-propagating cells.
Additional research has shown that the candidate might make drug-resistant cells vulnerable to various ani-cancer agents. This means, treatment with this antibody may help to shrink tumours on two fronts – by directly affecting metastasis-initiating cells and by indirectly enhancing anti-cancer immune surveillance mechanisms.
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