Singapore: Australian drug discovery company, Novogen, has developed anti-tropomyosin drug candidate, Anisina, which has the potential to improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy in children and reduce life-long side-effects.

Neuroblastoma is a cancer that is most frequently observed in the young with more than 90 percent of diagnoses occurring in children under 5 years of age. It is considered to be the most common solid tumour in children outside the brain. Although childhood cancers such as neuroblastoma are relatively rare compared to adult cancers, the potential years of life lost are substantial making it imperative that new clinical strategies are developed to treat this disease.

The importance of this study, from a clinical perspective, is that it shows we can dose animals with a proprietary formulation of Anisina in combination with the standard of care and recapitulate in an animal model of neuroblastoma the same effect as observed in the test tube.

According to Dr Justine Stehn, anti-tropomyosin program director, Novogen, this represents an important milestone in the development of Anisina as a combination therapy for the treatment of neuroblastoma.