BERKELEY HEIGHTS, NJ, December 21, 2000
- Genta Incorporated (Nasdaq:
GNTA
) announced that it has signed an exclusive worldwide licensing
agreement with the U.S. National Institutes of Health for a novel
type of cancer therapy known as "decoy aptamers". A separate
Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) will be
executed to provide funding of this work to Dr. Yoon S. Cho-Chung
at the National Cancer Institute, who is a leader in this field and
a co-inventor of the technology.
The technology involves the use of short sequences of
oligonucleotides (i.e. chemically modified DNA or RNA) that can
bind proteins known as "transcription factors". Normally,
transcription factors bind to specific sites in genomic DNA and
regulate the ultimate translation of proteins from the RNA message.
When taken up by cancer cells, "decoy aptamers" attach themselves
to these transcription factors, thereby preventing their binding to
normal DNA, and thus preventing production of proteins that may be
critically involved in the cause or progression of cancer.
"This technology further exploits Gentas expertise using
oligonucleotide chemistry to regulate the proteins that are
critical factors for cancer cell growth," said Dr. Robert E. Klem,
Chief Scientific Officer at Genta, who went onto note: "We believe
this general technique of using decoy aptamers is an
extraordinarily powerful approach that has not yet been generally
recognized by the pharmaceutical community. The technology
represents an extension of our work into a new platform for
designing novel agents for cancer treatment."
An abstract of one specific application of this technology can
be viewed in a recent publication from the Journal of Biological
Chemistry:
DNA Decoy Application
. A summary of the general approach of decoy aptamers was recently
published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation:
Decoy Aptamers
.
