Siramesine, another targeted therapy for cancer?

Implications: This article describes a new partnership between two European based companies for the development of a novel agent, Siramesine, in the treatment of cancer. What makes this interesting is that this is yet another "targeted therapy" for cancer, involving the induction of apoptosis or programmed cell death. This could potentially be combined with a number of chemotherapy drugs or with other targeted agents that induce apoptosis through parallel or complementary pathways, such as Sorafenib, Sutinib, and Oblimersen.

Analysis: Our understanding of apoptosis pathways and how they might be used to treat cancer continues to grow. I am now hearing lectures on "horizontal" (attacking two parallel apoptosis pathways) versus "vertical" (where the two agents presumably induce apoptosis through different steps in the same pathway) combination targeted therapies for cancer, in primarily clinical oncology meetings. There are also multiple combination therapies under investigation in various solid tumors where a targeted agent is being tested with a variety of chemotherapy agents.

The caspase portion of the apoptosis pathway is I believe fairly far downstream and this will create many opportunities to combine with upstream targeted agents and also chemo drugs, depending on the type of tumor, preclinical results, and any responses that may be seen in early Phase I trials.

I am excited to see a new agent that affects a different part of the pathway come to the stage of clinical testing and look forward to the results of its testing.