Ability Pharma Receives 2 Million From the Government for Its Cancer Treatment

Financial backing for Abilty Pharma. The Spanish biopharmaceutical company has received €2 million from the government to advance its anticancer treatment, according to Carles Domènech, CEO of Ability Pharma.

The Catalan company has received the amount as non-dilutive funding from the Ministry of Science and Innovation to accelerate the regulatory pathway for its anti-cancer autophagy marker ABTL0812, Domènech added. The drug has been shown to be able to induce cancer cell death through autophagy (self-digestion).

ABTL0812 has demonstrated clinical efficacy in a Phase II clinical trial in patients with endometrial cancer or non-small cell lung cancer, as first-line treatment in combination with chemotherapy and as maintenance treatment after chemotherapy cycles.

The drug has also received orphan drug designation (ODD) for pancreatic cancer, biliary cancer, and pediatric neuroblastoma from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

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Ability Pharma is working on a drug capable of inducing cancer cell death through autophagy

In preclinical cancer models, ABTL0812 is effective as a single agent with a safety profile across a broad spectrum of cancer types, including lung, endometrial and pancreatic cancer, neuroblastoma, and glioma.

In 2021, the company announced the inclusion of the first patients in a Phase 2b clinical trial with ABTL0812 and another drug, Folfirinox, as first-line therapy in advanced pancreatic cancer simultaneously in the United States and Europe. The study started simultaneously at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center and Vall d’Hebron Institut d’Oncologia, with Davendra Sohal and Teresa Macarulla as principal investigators.

The trial was funded with €5 million from the European Commission’s EIC Accelerator Program under Horizon 2020 and $2 million from the NIH-R01 grant managed by the FDA in its Orphan Disease Program.

Ability Pharma is a biopharmaceutical company founded in 2009, based in Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona), and focused on the development of innovative oral anticancer compounds that produce selective autophagy-mediated cytotoxicity in cancer cells.

The ABTL0812 molecule is the most advanced active and has already been positively tested in Phase 2 clinical trials as first-line therapy in patients with endometrial or squamous lung cancer in Europe.

Ability Pharma’s shareholders include venture capital funds Inveready, Fitalent (Everis Group), SciClone Pharmaceuticals and its founders. The company is also supported by Acció, EIC Accelerator, Enisa and Mineco.

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(Featured image by ernestoeslava via Pixabay)

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