InterMed's novel Hif-1 cancer drug shows proof-of-principle

Dortmund, Germany-based InterMed Discovery GmbH, an emerging natural-product lead-discovery firm, says it has established proof-of-principle in a preclinical study of its optimized leading compound, IMD-026260, a cancer drug candidate.

The agent is a fully-synthetic small-molecule derived from a natural product lead compound that displays an "outstanding" cytotoxic potential, according to the firm, and exhibits a long half-life. IMD-026260 appears to be an inhibitor of Hypoxia-inducible factor 1 dependent transcriptional activity. Hif-1 activates the transcription of genes that are involved in crucial aspects of cancer biology, including angiogenesis, glucose metabolism, cell survival and invasiveness.

IMD-026260 initially demonstrated very high in vitro efficacy in a broad panel of tumor cell monolayer assays, as well as in colony-forming assays. From these tests, high scores of tumor selectivity were observed towards a variety of cancer cell lines derived from human prostate, lung, colon and uterus tumors. Subsequently, xenograft studies proved potent in vivo efficacy at single-digit mg/kg dosage levels.