By Allan Maurer
Exclusive CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA—Years from now, cancer sufferers may take a daily pill that turns the deadly killer into a manageable chronic disease, if Tau Therapeutics has its way. The Charlottesville firm has raised $500,000 to conduct animal tests and position its first cancer-halting drug for clinical testing.
“We have a new and different way of thinking about how to treat cancer,” says Andrew J. Krouse, CEO and founder of the company. Krouse tells TechJournal South that co-founder Dr. Lloyd Gray, a pathologist at the University of Virginia Medical Center, discovered how to stop cells from growing by accident. Gray is vice president of scientific discovery with Tau.
The method involves blocking a particular calcium T channel, an opening in the cell membrane that is normally only available prior to puberty or in adults when cells grow uncontrollably as in cancer.
While blocking this channel has therapeutic implications for treating pain, epilepsy and macular degeneration, Tau Therapeutics decided to focus on its ability to halt the spread of cancers.
“People have known for years that blocking a calcium channel would work,” Krouse says. But, he explains, they didn’t know which of the 406 ion channels, up to 20 percent of them calcium channels, would do it.
Studies by Tau’s scientific founders led to the identification of a universal, proliferation-producing mechanism dependent on a protein also known as Cav3.2. Tau’s founders also identified three FDA approved drugs that block this important point.
The company’s lead T-channel blockers have universally stopped cancer cell growth in the lab and in experiments with animal models of prostate, breast and colon cancer. Its lead compound showed an impressive 144 percent increase in lifespan in an animal model of colon cancer. Additional studies show the compounds hold promise for treating lung, ovary, and pancreatic cancers.
Krouse notes that the calcium channel blocker does nothing to normal cells. “It doesn’t kill anything. It just stops cancers from growing,” he says. Most cancers would still require surgery and radiation therapy to reduce tumor size.
Then, says Krouse, “They would take our pill daily for the rest of their lives.” That would lead to treating cancer as a chronic disease, a direction many researchers say is more likely than an outright cancer cure.
Krouse says he has met with a who’s who of cancer experts to develop a strategy for taking the first Tau Therapeutics product, a repositioned drug already available, into clinical trials within the next 18 months.
Currently Krouse is the company’s only fulltime employee. Dr. Timothy Macdonald, a professor of chemistry at the University of Virginia is a founder and vice president of drug discovery.
“We’re a new breed of company,” says Krouse. Its scientific work is conducted through partnerships with the University of Virginia, Duke University’s Advanced Brain Cancer Center in Durham, NC, and the Piedmont Triad Research Park in Winston-Salem, NC.
Tau expects to take its lead product to proof-of-concept clinical trials in the next 18 months. Krouse, who was on his way to talk with a venture capitalist as he completed his interview with TJS, says Tau will use the current angel funding to conduct animal tests and increase the amount of its data “to get us into the clinic.”
Then it hopes to do a Series A round of $7 million to $10 million by late summer or fall this year.
Once it has good clinical data, it will explore what to do next, most likely seeking a large pharmaceutical partner to further develop and commercialize its products, Krouse says.
For more information see: www.tautherapeutics.com
Allan Maurer can be reached at: allan@techjournalsouth.com
© 2007, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.
