Zalicus presents data on novel synergistic drug combinations for cancer at EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium

Zalicus Inc. (NASDAQ: ZLCS) presented data today on its discovery of novel synergistic drug combinations for the treatment of cancer at the EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics Meeting in Berlin, Germany on November 18, 2010. In a poster presentation entitled "Identification of synergistic drugs using combination high-throughput screening (cHTS) and breadth of activity in diverse cancer cell networks," Richard Rickles, Ph.D., Zalicus's Director of Oncology Research demonstrated that systematic combination studies using the Zalicus combination high-throughput screening (cHTS) technology can reveal patterns of chemotherapeutic sensitivity and resistance to identify potentially responsive patient populations.

“Identification of synergistic drugs using combination high-throughput screening (cHTS) and breadth of activity in diverse cancer cell networks”

Dr. Rickles evaluated signaling pathways that contain a number of important anti-cancer therapeutic targets, such as P13K and RAS, across a panel of cancer cell lines. His results indicate that simple pathway mutational analysis is insufficient to predict the outcome of concurrent inhibition while systematic combination studies using combination high-throughput screening technology can reveal unexpected patterns of sensitivity and resistance.

"These data, which were generated with our combination high-throughput screening (cHTS™) technology, support the rationale that employing a systematic approach to the discovery of novel targets and pathway interactions specific to cancer biology will lead toward development of more selective and efficacious combination therapeutics for a wide variety of cancers," commented Mark H.N. Corrigan, M.D., President and CEO of Zalicus Inc. "Zalicus is continuing to leverage the power of its proprietary cHTS technology through research collaborations with biopharmaceutical companies such as our ongoing oncology research collaboration with Novartis."