Taking a novel therapeutic tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) into Phase I is a costly process and the molecules chance of success can be limited if it has high toxicity levels, particularly for some diseases or if alternative treatments are available.
As a class TKI’s are known to have significant myelotoxicity liabilities and since there must be a balance between efficacy and toxicity being aware of this prior to clinical trials can be useful to drug development.
Speaking to Outsourcing-Pharma Emer Clarke, chief scientific officer of ReachBio, explained how clients can evaluate the toxicity of their product against currently available treatments to decide if it is worthwhile committing to clinical trials.
Furthermore, clients have used the service to evaluate their in-house molecule portfolio, assessing the toxicity of 10-20 compounds to decide which to take into Phase I.
Numerous pharma clients have used the service, leading to ReachBio recognising its potential and performing further research.
Supporting evidence
ReachBio had evidence of the effectiveness of HemoRANK from its work with pharma but because this data was generated using clients’ compounds is confidential.
Consequently ReachBio has now generated its own evidence by correlating its in vitro TKI clinical myelotoxicity readings with those found in medical literature.
Clarke explained that there is a “great correlation” between the in vitro and clinical data and this has allowed ReachBio to more officially launch and promote the service.
Eric Atkinson, president of BroadReach BioSystems and strategic advisor to ReachBio, believes this service will be “extremely useful during the development of new TKIs for both oncology and non-oncology indications”.
Clarke added that other companies offer similar services but ReachBio is the only one to support it with evidence of the correlation between in vitro and clinical toxicity.