Wrapping poison in pretty packages has been become high science in Lake Forest for NeoPharm Inc., a small biotech firm.
The company, which has about 135 employees, is at the smart-bomb forefront in the war on cancer. It recently acquired a new chief, Gregory Young, who had worked for nearby Baxter International Inc.
The firm has developed a system to deliver toxins that kill brain cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone.
Working with a fast-track program offered by the Food and Drug Administration, the tumor-targeting drug has demonstrated in early studies that it can extend patients’ lives significantly. It combines a toxin with a protein made to be like a key that fits into cancer cells, but ignores normal cells.
If studies under way at more than 50 hospitals support the preliminary results, the treatment could be commercially available in 2007, Young said.
That would provide NeoPharm with a revenue stream as it brings other cancer-fighting poison packages to market, he said.
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NeoPharm has developed expertise in crafting packages made from fatty materials called lipids. The goal is to make the packages look appetizing to cancer cells, which delight in high-fat diets, thereby tricking them into swallowing the poison pill inside.
This strategy, which has been around for several years, has been used for a few cancer drugs, but it mostly has yielded disappointing results because researchers lacked the knowledge and techniques to get the lipid packages just right, said Dr. Jeffrey Sherman, NeoPharm’s chief medical officer.
The packages need to be the right size to make their way through the body to present themselves to hungry cancer cells.
“It’s like making basketballs, baseballs and marbles when it turns out what really works is ping-pong balls,” said Young.
NeoPharm, which believes it has found the right formula for its packages, has begun the earliest stage of human testing with its lipid delivery system.
It hopes to team with larger pharmaceutical firms that have proven cancer drugs that may work more effectively when delivered by lipids.
There are also known cancer-killing substances that aren’t used therapeutically because of an inability to deliver them to cancer cells, and the firm hopes some of these can be mobilized by its technology, said Sherman.
To underscore NeoPharm’s leadership in the field, it will host a conference, “Advances in Liposomes,” next month in Lincolnshire that will bring together researchers from across the United States and other countries.
Young faces major challenges in restoring investor confidence in publicly traded NeoPharm, which has seen its share price slide from around $20 to less than $6 in the past year.
Shareholders were likely disappointed that a claim by NeoPharm against Pharmacia, now part of Pfizer Inc., was dismissed by an arbitrator.
The long-running dispute relates to an agreement between NeoPharm and Pharmacia to develop cancer drugs. Earlier this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission said it was investigating the matter.
Game system: A computer game may be an alternative to medicine for some children with an attention deficit.
That’s the pitch from Encourage Software, a company that is introducing a computer model intended to help parents be consistent in providing rewards and penalties associated with their children’s behavior.
Kids earn or lose points through their actions during the week. The information is then loaded into a computer to determine the level of privileges and allowance a child has earned.
Youngsters take to the system, the firm says, because it seems like a computer game.