Positive results for Callisto's atiprimod

Callisto Pharmaceuticals, a New York, USA-based developer of new drug treatments in the fight against cancer and other major health threats, has announced the recent publication of a research paper on its drug candidate atiprimod in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics (vol 6), a journal published by the American Association of Cancer. The publication, jointly authored by scientists from Callisto and the Institute of Hepatitis Virus Research, describes preclinical data suggesting that atiprimod inhibited growth of liver carcinoma cells to a greater degree when cells expressed hepatitis B and hepatitis C viruses than for those cells not expressing these viruses.

According to Kunwar Shailubhai, senior vice president, discovery research, and the senior author of the article, atiprimod has unique properties centering on its ability to selectively inhibit activation of PI-3 kinase/Akt and Jak/STAT3 pathways which are overexpressed in a majority of human cancers.