The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), London, UK, and Nuvectis Pharma have announced plans to commence a Phase I clinical trial of a new experimental drug, NXP800, in advanced cancer patients.

Discovered by the researchers at the Cancer Research UK Cancer Therapeutics Unit at ICR, NXP800 is an oral drug that potentially hinders the heat shock factor-1 (HSF1) pathway.

The HSF1 pathway plays a key role in the regulation of vital pathways associated with cancer cell growth, metastasis and survival across various malignancies.

‘Transcription factors’ such as HSF1 are hard to target directly with treatments.

Utilising cellular ‘phenotypic screening’, ICR scientists discovered a small molecule that can hinder HSF1’s gene activation programme in live cancer cells in culture.

Sponsored by Nuvectis Pharma, the first-in-human Phase I trial of NXP800 will begin in the fourth quarter of this year in cancer patients from The Royal Marsden.

Specialist teams in pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics at ICR will oversee the capture of data on the body’s management of the drug and its biological effects.

This will offer biomarkers that could become a ‘pharmacological audit trail’ of NXP800’s behaviour, ICR noted.