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.
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