Novel Off-Label, Combined Therapy for the Treatment of Multiple Myeloma and Other Conditions
Theodore Lampidis and Metin Kurtoglu
Problem
Multiple myeloma is the second most prevalent blood cancer (10%) after non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and there is increasing incidence of early age onset. Moreover, current therapeutic interventions are not adequate as evidenced by the average survival rate; measured from time of diagnosis, survival is approximately three years.
Solution
A novel adjuvant to chemotherapy that employs an off-label use of two FDA-Approved drugs.
Competitive Advantage
Employs already FDA-approved drugs that have been used and tested long term in patients with little to no serious side effects.
Applications
Important chemotherapy adjuvant that may have broad applicability with respect to various cancers as well as select non-cancerous diseases.
Patent Status
US Provisional Patent Filed March 23, 2009.
Licensing Opportunity
Available for License.
About the Inventors
Dr. Lampidis is a Professor of Cell Biology & Anatomy at the University of Miami. He is the inventor of 3 issued patents, multiple patent applications,and has experience in the early stage commercialization process.
Dr. Lampidis' primary work has been focused on the molecular and cellular mechanisms responsible for Multi-drug Resistance (the process and phenomenon by which tumors initially respond to chemotherapy but eventually become resistant to that therapy and to subsequent therapies). Dr. Lampidis has contributed many papers addressing this serious clinical obstacle in cancer treatment. He has been regularly awarded grants from the National Institutes of Health in the division of the National Cancer Institute, and has been an invited Speaker at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute (New York), Oxford University (Oxford England), Max Planck Institute (Munich Germany), MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston Texas), Harvard Medical School, (Boston) and numerous other prestigious Institutes. He has acted as a consultant for a number of drug companies, including Bristol Myers Squibb, Wyeth Ayerst, Guilford Pharmaceuticals, and most recently Threshold Pharmaceuticals. He received two consecutive five year awards beginning in 2001 from the National Cancer Institute on his latest work which involves a strategy for selectively killing the slow growing cells found in the inner core of solid tumors using non-toxic analogs of glucose
Metin Kurtoglu is a young scientist who holds both an MD and Ph. D. degree. He has focused his studies on how the effects of glucose analogs such as 2-deoxyglucose leads to cell death in certain tumor cell types even when grown in the presence of oxygen by inducing endoplasmic reticulum stress. He along with his mentor, Dr. Lampidis, have been involved with investigating how to exploit fundamental differences in glucose metabolism between normal and tumor cells for therapeutic gain using sugar analogs. They have found that subtle chemical differences in these analogs have profound effects on glucose flux within the cell which contribute to meaningful biologic activity that can be used to selectively kill a variety of different tumor cell types.
