Kazia announces St Jude’s Hospital phase I DIPG trial to treat the deadly children’s brain cancer

St Jude’s Hospital article on phase I trial using GDC-0084 to treat the deadly children’s brain cancer, DIPG

Kazia Therapeutics is pleased to share an article by St Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital on its phase I clinical trial for diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), an aggressive form of childhood brain cancer.

Kazia has collaborated with St Jude’s – a leading children’s hospital in the US – on the trial, which is using its lead candidate, GDC-0084, in the treatment of the deadly disease.

It is estimated that DIPG affects several hundred children each year in the United States, accounting for 10-15% of all childhood brain tumours, and is most common between the ages of 4 and 11 years old.

The article explains how the trial aims to push DIPG treatment — which hasn’t significantly advanced in more than 50 years — a major step forward. It talks about how GDC-0084 targets a growth pathway that is overactive in most DIPGs and similar brain tumours.

However, unlike most other chemotherapies, the drug also crosses the blood-brain barrier, enabling high drug exposure at the tumour site.

Read the full article here.

About Kazia Therapeutics Limited
Kazia Therapeutics Limited (ASX: KZA, NASDAQ: KZIA) is an innovative oncology-focused biotechnology company, based in Sydney, Australia. Our pipeline includes two clinical-stage drug development candidates, and we are working to develop therapies across a range of oncology indications.

Our lead program is GDC-0084, a small molecule inhibitor of the PI3K / AKT / mTOR pathway, which is being developed to treat glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and most aggressive form of primary brain cancer in adults. Licensed from Genentech in late 2016, GDC0084 entered a phase II clinical trial in 2018. Initial safety data was released in May 2019, and efficacy data is expected in 2H 2019. GDC-0084 was granted orphan designation for glioblastoma by the US FDA in February 2018.

TRX-E-002-1 (Cantrixil), is a third-generation benzopyran molecule with activity against cancer stem cells, and is being developed to treat ovarian cancer. TRX-E-002-1 is currently undergoing a phase I clinical trial in Australia and the United States. Initial data was presented at the AACR annual conference in April 2019 and the study remains ongoing. Cantrixil was granted orphan designation for ovarian cancer by the US FDA in April 2015.

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