Antibiotic offers potential  as HR Therapy Solution

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a world-leading cancer treatment and research institute, has granted Cambridge-based Varsity Pharmaceuticals, a developer of small molecule candidates for treatment of resistant cancers, exclusive rights to develop and commercialise Novobiocin, a potential first-in-class DNA polymerase theta inhibitor for the treatment of Homologous Recombination (HR) deficient cancers.

HR deficiency occurs where the body is unable to repair DNA damage caused by mutations in genes such as BRCA1 and BRCA2 and a form of therapy for HR deficiency has been the use of PARP inhibitors; however, PARP inhibitor drug resistance is now emerging as a significant barrier to their effectiveness.

Research led by Professor Alan D. D’Andrea (1) at the Dana-Farber Institute has demonstrated that, as a potent Pol-Theta enzyme inhibitor, the drug Novobiocin, originally developed as an antibiotic, could be a potential candidate for use on its own, or combined with PARP inhibitors to treat HR-deficient tumours, even after they have become resistant to PARP inhibitor therapy.

 Varsity, a sister company to rare disease solutions developer Cycle Pharmaceuticals, plans to start the first in-patient clinical studies of Novobiocin in 2022.

(1) Nature Cancer (Zhou et al. 2021)

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