Press release from Companies
Published: 2020-01-21 10:19:46
CEO Nils Brünner and Chairman of the Board Peter Høngaard, have now safely returned from the JP Morgan Meeting in San Francisco. The JP Morgan meeting is the largest meeting in the world when it comes to meeting potential partners within Life Science. Prior to the meeting, Scandion Oncology had arranged face-to-face meetings with pharma companies, investors, bankers and service providers.
It was a great satisfaction to us that the pharma companies acknowledge the view that we are in heavy need of new drugs to combat anti-cancer drug resistance. Although drugs used in immune-oncology have high priority, the vast majority of all cancer patients do not have immune-oncology drugs as an option. These approx. 80% of all cancer patients still have no other option but to receive standard chemotherapy with the risk of developing resistance to these drugs.
Anonymous examples from our meetings with Pharma companies:
Company xx: This large pharma company told us that they believe in drugs that can improve the effects of current anti-cancer drugs. That SCO-101 is a safe oral drug that can be taken at home prior to chemotherapy would make it very useful since patients and the health care system would save hospital visits. This company already has drugs on the market where a combination with SCO-101 potentially could make a difference. Moreover, that SCO-101 has a dual function including degradation of drug efflux pumps and inhibition of the SRPK1 kinase was seen as an advantage.
Scandion Oncology agreed to send additional information to this company and a potential future collaboration will be discussed internally.
Company yy: This large pharma company already has drugs within immune-oncology. However, it is expected that only 20% of all cancer patients will be candidates for these types of drugs. Moreover, recent published studies have shown that when combining chemotherapy and immune-oncology drugs an additive effect can be obtain, but only in patients with chemotherapy sensitive cancer cells. Scandion Oncology was encouraged to look more into the possibility to combine chemotherapy and immune-oncology drugs with SCO-101 in order to increase the initial cell kill by chemotherapy thus facilitating infiltration of immune cells which subsequently will be targeted by the immune-oncology drugs.
Scandion Oncology was invited to continue discussions about this important subject and the company offered to provide drugs for preclinical studies.
Of equal importance was meetings with CRO companies that can provide help with clinical studies in USA and Europe.
All in all Scandion Oncology"s clinical development program was highly acknowledged and created significant interest. In particular, we were told that targeting drug resistance is considered a very innovative and highly needed approach. We will now continue the dialog with our potential partners.
On top of these activities within business development, Scandion Oncology"s primary focus right now is to recruit the needed number of patients for our first phase 2 study in colorectal cancer patients resistant to chemotherapy. Moreover, we will submit the protocol for our second phase 2 study in pancreatic cancer patients resistant to chemotherapy to the Danish medicines Agency during Q2, 2020.
Kind regards
Nils Brünner, MD, Professor
CEO, Scandion Oncology
For further information regarding Scandion Oncology, please contact:
Nils Brünner, CEO
Phone: +45 26 14 47 08
E-mail: nb@scandiononcology.com