Invion Limited announced the first set of laboratory results from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre (Peter Mac) testing INV043 on squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) cell lines, which are linked to anal cancers. The in vitro tests showed that photoactivated INV043 was effective against the six SCC cell lines that cover the spectrum found in anal cancers. The overall results from this study are consistent with the promising outcomes achieved at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research (Hudson Institute) on other cancer types, including triple negative breast cancer.

INV043 is Invion's lead drug candidate and represents the next generation of photodynamic therapy that aims to treat multiple types of cancers. The core purpose of these studies was to assess the relative cytotoxicity of light activated INV043 of human anal SSC cell lines. These data are a prelude to planned in vivo studies.

This was done by: Comparing the phototoxicity of a sentinel cell line used in both Hudson Institute (HIMR) and Peter Mac (PMCC) research laboratories, namely immortalised human embryonic kidney cells (HEK) Testing phototoxicity of human HPV+ve and ­ve anal SCC cell lines Testing phototoxicity of a unique mouse anal SCC model developed at the PMCC which comes in two forms: parental line and one with human HPV E6 and E7 oncoproteins. This second line is a faithful mouse version of human HPV+ve anal cancer.