Bio-Path Holdings, Inc. (OTCBB: BPTH), a publicly traded biotechnology company with drug development operations in Houston, Texas, announced today the Company has executed an exclusive license with The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center to develop liposome tumor targeting technology. Bio-Path is currently developing a neutral-lipid based liposome delivery technology for nucleic acid cancer drugs (including antisense and siRNA molecules). The new technology, being licensed in the field of neutral lipid-based liposome delivery of antisense technologies and FAK siRNA, will enhance the Company’s liposome delivery technology by adding vectors to the liposomes targeted to a receptor that is specifically over-expressed on a majority of solid and hematological tumors and on 80 percent of metastatic epithelial tumors. The Company believes this liposome tumor-targeting technology for antisense and FAK siRNA delivery is a highly promising strategy for treating primary and metastatic cancers.
The historical perspective of cancer treatments has been drugs that affect the entire body. Advances in the past decade have shifted to treating the tumor tissue itself. One of the main strategies in these developments has been targeted therapy, involving drugs that are targeted to block the expression of specific disease causing proteins while having little or no effect on other healthy tissue. Nucleic acid drugs, specifically antisense and siRNA, are two of the most promising fields of targeted therapy. Development of antisense and siRNA, however, has been limited by the lack of a suitable method to deliver these drugs to the diseased cells with high uptake into the cell and without causing toxicity. Bio-Path’s currently licensed neutral-lipid based liposome technology is designed to accomplish this. Studies have shown a tenfold to thirtyfold increase in tumor cell uptake with this technology compared to other delivery methods. The Company’s first drug with this delivery technology is scheduled to commence a Phase I clinical trial in the fourth quarter 2009.