Annexin Pharmaceuticals announced important progress in the company's preclinical cancer research where the drug candidate ANXV has shown promising results as a transporter of chemotherapy drugs to kill cancer cells. Within the framework of Annexin's cancer initiative, the company has successfully produced a so-called conjugate where the drug candidate ANXV is chemically bound to a chemotherapy agent and together forms a new composite molecule. In cell systems outside the body, this ANXV conjugate has been shown to kill a type of cancer cell taken from a person with triple-negative breast cancer, a very difficult-to-treat form of breast cancer.

The chemotherapy agent alone was not effective on this highly resistant cell type and with no immune cells present in the cell system ANXV was, as expected, also not effective. Annexin has chosen to drive development towards new cancer treatments based on the fact that many different cancer cells expose the substance phosphatidylserine (PS), ANXV's target molecule, on their surface. One part of the company's cancer initiative involves the development of ANXV conjugates.

In a process of conjugation, a cytotoxic agent is chemically bound to ANXV and the expected therapeutic effect will be achieved when cancer cells exposing PS on the surface, transports the conjugate into the cell where the chemotherapy drug gets separated from ANXV and then exerts its cytotoxic effect. The principle of linking chemotherapy drugs to proteins that target cancer cells is well known and used in many approved drugs. The market for conjugate drugs in oncology is expected to reach more than USD 10 billion within a few years.

An ANXV conjugate may become the first conjugate drug that takes advantage of the presence of PS on the surface of cells in many difficult-to-treat type of cancers.