Moleculin Acquires $2M Private Grant for Brain Tumor Trial
Moleculin Biotech, Inc is a preclinical-stage pharmaceutical company focused on the development of anti-cancer drug candidates. The company in license agreements with The University of Texas System on behalf of the MD Anderson Cancer Center (“MD Anderson”), has now announced that its WP1066 drug will receive $2 million in private grant funding.
The company will be backing its Investigational New Drug clearance for a physician-sponsored Phase I trial of Moleculin’s drug WP1066 in patients with recurrent malignant glioma and brain metastasis from melanoma.
“On the heels of our recent IND announcement, we are honored to now announce that a significant private grant has been awarded to help cover the costs of the upcoming brain tumor trial at MD Anderson,” commented Walter Klemp, Chairman and CEO of Moleculin. “We should emphasize that this $2 million grant is in addition to two prestigious SPORE grants awarded by the National Cancer Institute (“NCI”).”
Mr. Klemp added, “The Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (“SPORE”) program was established by NCI to enable the rapid and efficient movement of basic scientific findings into clinical settings and it is now considered a highly prestigious award for promising anticancer technologies. Due to the highly competitive nature of such grants and their and external review processes, we believe they provide further validation of our program and the approach to the treatment of brain cancer and cancer metastasis to the brain. Overall, the combination of all of these funding sources not only allows this trial to begin to move forward, we believe it signals strong support for the development of this class of potential drugs and more specifically, significant enthusiasm for the potential of WP1066 to shut down unwanted cell signaling and to empower the immune system to fight cancer.
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