Dr Kelly turns a simple tax rebate into a wealth of information...

Dr Kelly turns a simple tax rebate into a wealth of information for shareholders!

Sydney, 17 January 2018: Noxopharm (NOX: ASX) is pleased to announce that it has received $855,518 under the Federal Government’s Research and Development (R&D) Tax Incentive Scheme. This amount pertains to expenditure in the 2016/2017 financial year and follows the Company’s listing on the ASX in August 2016.

Noxopharm CEO, Graham Kelly, explained that the funds have been earmarked for two key company R&D initiatives: (i) the brain cancer project, and (ii) an abscopal response project.

The brain cancer project is a multi-institution initiative involving the Lowy Cancer Research Centre, Sydney Children’s Hospital, Olivia Newton John Cancer Research Institute, and University of Hong Kong.

The project, we believe, is unique, firstly in investigating the ability of NOX66 to enhance the effectiveness of radiotherapy in the treatment of most brain cancer, and, secondly, in looking at this potential use across the broad spectrum of cancers of the brain involving primary brain cancers in both adults and children, as well as cancers that arise outside of the brain and spread to the brain (secondary brain cancer).

Dr Kelly explained, ”After surgery, clinical experience points to radiotherapy as holding the most promise in the treatment of cancers of the brain. Chemotherapy has proven generally to be palliative with a relatively short-term benefit, whereas radiotherapy has the potential to be curative, but is limited by healthy brain cells being so sensitive to radiation damage.”

To date NOX66 has ticked the key boxes required for the broad brain cancer program the Company is targeting:

(a) NOX66 readily delivers its active component, Idronoxil, into the brain in animals;

(b) In laboratory tests, Idronoxil enhances the effect of radiotherapy on human cancer cells while sparing healthy cells;

(c) In the laboratory, Idronoxil appears to be unaffected by multidrug-resistant mechanisms in killing brain cancer cells that are highly resistant to standard-of-care chemotherapy drugs such as temozolomide;

(d) Pre-clinically, the action of Idronoxil on brain cancer cells is unaffected by their MGMT status. That is, Idronoxil is independent of the activity of a certain gene (MGMT) that GBM cancers are tested for routinely as a predictor of patient survival. That gene (MGMT) is active in approximately 80% of GBM cancers. GBM cancer (Glioblastoma multiforme) is the most common and most aggressive form of cancer that begins in the brain.

Importantly, current clinical studies to date also have confirmed that NOX66 is well tolerated by humans.

Dr Kelly added, ”Our main objective is to have NOX66 in the clinic in both adults and children with brain cancer just as soon as practicable, with the current pre-clinical program looking to identify the optimal way to use NOX66 in the different forms of brain cancer, specifically including secondary brain cancer.”

The second R&D program to receive funding from this rebate is seeking to identify the role of Idronoxil (as NOX66) in facilitating the induction of the bystander or abscopal effects, phenomena where the treatment of isolated cancer lesions with radiotherapy leads to the complete remission of both irradiated and non-irradiated lesions. This program is investigating the involvement of immune and epigenetic components in those phenomena. This second program is linked to the brain cancer project in the possibility of using NOX66 + radiotherapy in patients with cancers such as lung, melanoma, breast and prostate cancers etc, and where these can spread to the brain. An abscopal response involving an epigenetic component may possibly lead to the remission of the secondary brain cancers without requiring radiation of the brain.