WA-based cancer pharmaceutical start-up secures CUREator funding

Researchers dedicated to developing the first cancer immunotherapy tablet have been boosted by a $374,000 CUREator top-up funding grant.

The CUREator funding has been made available through the Federal Government’s Medical Research Future Fund, with the grant allowing Setonix Pharmaceuticals, a company spun out from the Telethon Kids Institute and The University of Western Australia, to continue its quest to develop an oral drug that boosts the immune response against cancer, potentially improving outcomes for patients.

Having met early milestones, this grant is in addition to an earlier CUREator grant of $480,000.

Telethon Kids Institute Associate Professor Joost Lesterhuis, who heads the Institute’s Cancer Centre, said the team’s research, currently in the laboratory stage, had identified a protein that put a brake on the immune response to certain cancers.

“We want to develop a drug that will block that particular protein, which will release that brake on the immune system, allowing it to attack cancer cells,” Associate Professor Lesterhuis said.

“Current treatments for cancer, like chemotherapy and radiotherapy, leave many patients with devastating long-term side effects. By harnessing patients’ own immune systems we can use these new treatments to reduce the need for more toxic therapies.”

He said immunotherapy had shown positive results in some cancers, but many patients still did not benefit from immunotherapy against their particular cancer.

Associate Professor Matthew Piggott, a medicinal chemist in UWA’s School of Molecular Sciences, said proof-of-concept research had shown that inhibiting the protein the team had identified improved the efficacy of immunotherapy treatment in laboratory models of cancer.

“We have identified lead compounds with many of the properties desired in an oral immunotherapy drug. The next stage is optimisation to identify a drug candidate for development,” Dr Piggott said.

Setonix will use the CUREator funding to progress its biology and chemistry research. The WA-based company, named for the genus of the iconic quokka, also previously received vital seed funding from the State Government’s WA Future Health and Research Innovation Fund.

Setonix was one of three recipients of a share in $1.37 million from the CUREator Investment Review Committee’s preclinical stream ‘top-up’ round. CUREator is Australia’s national biomedical incubator managed by Brandon BioCatalyst to support the development of Australian biomedical research and innovations.