Melbourne, Australia; Starpharma Holdings (ASX: SPL, OTCQX: SPHRY) today announced the nomination of leading anti-cancer drug docetaxel as a lead candidate in its cancer drug delivery program following encouraging early results.

Docetaxel is an important chemotherapy drug to treat breast cancer, lung cancer and prostate cancer, and last year generated sales of €2.122 billion (US$3 billion).

Starpharma has been applying its dendrimer technology to the reformulation of existing cancer drugs, and following these latest results, will advance a dendrimer-docetaxel formulation to further pre-clinical studies as a lead candidate in its drug delivery cancer program.

Docetaxel reformulated with a suite of Starpharma’s dendrimers showed a 2000 to 8000-fold improvement in water solubility, potentially allowing for the development of a novel, improved formulation of this important cancer drug.  It is hoped that the increased water solubility provided by Starpharma’s dendrimer technology will allow the development of a docetaxel formulation which would not require pre-medication with high doses of cortisone and would avoid the need for inclusion of formulation components thought to cause the severe allergic reactions and fluid retention experienced by some patients^[i] 

Starpharma’s strategy in advancing this candidate may be compared with that of American nano-pharmaceutical developer Abraxis with their highly successful water-soluble formulation of paclitaxel (a very similar molecule to docetaxel), Abraxane^®.  (Abraxis was acquired in 2010 for US$2.9 billion by Celgene.)

"The success seen with Abraxane^® highlights the significant commercial opportunity of reformulated proprietary chemotherapy agents which can result in improved patient outcomes, significant product sales, and extended commercial life through new intellectual property filings,” said Starpharma CEO Dr Jackie Fairley.

"We believe a proprietary docetaxel-dendrimer formulation has a similar potential and as a result we are expanding our internal drug delivery program to fully explore this opportunity."

Starpharma’s earlier work with other closely related cancer drugs demonstrated similar solubility improvements and other significant benefits including markedly reduced toxicities and lengthened half-life.Starpharma’s internal program will run in parallel with its drug-delivery partnering program which includes a growing list of pharmaceutical companies including GSK and Lilly.

Starpharma has also filed a new patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, incorporating recent Docetaxel data.  This patent builds on extensive filings Starpharma currently holds and captures the potential uses of a class of dendrimers in a range of applications related to drug delivery, laying the groundwork to secure further intellectual property in this area.