Australians suffering hard-to-beat cancers are set to be the first to benefit from trials of new treatments conducted under a two-year partnership between Radiopharm Theranostics and GenesisCare.
The partnership between the two Australian-founded health-focused companies will study the safety and tolerability of Radiopharm’s novel radiopharmaceutical treatments that target tumours in the brain, lung and prostate. The series of first-phase clinical trials will be run in Australia.
Radiopharm says most clinical developments in radiopharmaceuticals to date have targeted metastatic prostate cancer and neuroendocrine tumours.
Radiopharmaceuticals are drugs that contain small amounts of radioactive substances and are injected into a patient’s blood stream to either diagnose or identify a diseased cell and then to treat it. Theranostics – a portmanteau of diagnostics and therapeutics – describes the area of medicine that combines the use of drugs with varying levels of radioactivity to identify and then destroy cancer tumours, while leaving healthy tissue unharmed.
The partnership, which will see Radiopharm engage GenesisCare’s Contract Research Organisation and Imaging Research Organisation to implement the three Australian trials, signifies a strengthening of the existing relationship between the two companies.
The duo signed a letter of intent a year ago for a phase-one therapeutic trial using a Radiopharm proprietary treatment that targets the so-called “PDL expression” in the most common form of lung cancer.
Four months later, Radiopharm extended its agreement with GenesisCare for a proposed second clinical trial in Australia to target prostate cancer using a Radiopharm proprietary antibody discovered by the United States-based, Professor David Ulmert.
The link with Prof. Ulmert was strengthened earlier this month when Radiopharm entered into a binding agreement to buy the company he co-founded – Pharma15 Corporation – which focuses on treating prostate cancer with radiopharmaceuticals.
Radiopharm Theranostics chief executive officer and managing director Riccardo Canevari said: “Radiopharmaceuticals are quickly becoming a highly promising therapeutic frontier in oncology, offering new hope to patients who may have exhausted all other treatment options.
We are delighted to be extending and strengthening our partnership with GenesisCare, a world-leader in cancer care, to advance the future of radiopharmaceuticals and improve access to innovative therapies for patients all over the world.”
Radiopharm Theranostics first listed on the boards when it joined the ASX in late 2021 with the aim of developing treatments in areas of high unmet needs. In just a couple of years, and in conjunction with top-ranking universities and research institutes around the globe, the company has built a pipeline of six novel technologies in various stages of pre-clinical and clinical development.
Management says Australia’s regulatory landscape facilitates research and development for theranostics and its clinical program currently includes one phase-two and three phase-one trials in solid tumour cancers including breast, kidney and brain.
GenesisCare was founded in Brisbane in 2005 and now claims to be the world’s biggest provider of radiation therapy. The company sold its cardiology business last year to concentrate on oncology and now operates 40 centres across Australia, in addition to about 400 locations in the US, the United Kingdom and Spain, with a total of more than 5000 employees.
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By Mark Irving
