A new cancer treatment, designed to make chemotherapy vastly more effective, is to be prepared for clinical trials by researchers at the University of Strathclyde.
Scottish pharmaceutical company Ryboquin Ltd has raised £1.3 million of new funding to enable the research to be carried out at Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences.
The company’s product, Ryboquin ECP-102, is a Tumour Apoptosis Enhancer and one of a new class of gene therapy drugs designed to make chemotherapy many times more effective in patients. The funds raised will be used to initiate the process of scaling up the product – taking it from a laboratory-scale to commercial-scale project – to enable it to be tested in a full clinical trial.
Professor Alex Mullen, Professor of Pharmacy Practice at Strathclyde, will lead the research.
He said, ‘This is an exciting opportunity for us to work in partnership and to accelerate the process that might ultimately see this product getting into a clinical environment where it may be of benefit to patients.
‘I relish the prospect of co-ordinating the science relating to the scaling up of this product in order to get it from the laboratory into clinical trials.’
Jim Watson, Director of Innovation and Enterprise at Scottish Enterprise, said, ‘It’s fantastic to be able to support this ambitious Scottish company in scaling up its business, thanks to equity investment from our SIB co-investment funds, and in taking a potentially game-changing product to clinical trial following the award of one of our SMART R&D grants.
‘We know that companies that embrace both innovation and exporting grow twice as fast as those that don’t. These are crucial competitive advantages, not just for Ryboquin, but for the long-term success of the Scottish economy.’
