Glioblastoma, which kills roughly Americans each year, remains challenging to treat. The emerging biopharmaceutical company Global Cancer Technology (GCT; San Diego) is developing a novel x-ray activated modality for drug delivery to treat glioblastoma.

GCT has a licensing agreement with the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) for a drug delivery platform that unites a nanocrystal to a prodrug that can be activated using radiosurgery. GCT has also acquired two patents for investigational drugs that can cross the blood-brain barrier. One is an inhibitor of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K), a type of enzyme involved in a number of cellular functions that facilitates rapid growth in glioblastoma. The other compound targets Vps34, a phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase. Both compounds modulate autophagy, a regenerative cellular process. According to UCSD researchers, autophagy yields amino acids that support tumor survival. Blocking autophagy could thus support immunotherapy.

Get the full story from our sister site, Drug Discovery & Development.