Overview

Marsala Biotech Inc. is a Winnipeg, Canada, based new drug discovery and development company, concentrating on new treatments for cancer. The Company's lead technology, E10A, is an investigational gene therapy agent that utilizes an adenovirus vector to deliver the endostatin gene. E10A is being evaluated in patient populations to treat head and neck cancer, which accounts for 6% of all malignancies in the United States. A Phase II clinical trial of E10A in head and neck cancer patients (n=140) has been completed in China. E10A in combination with chemotherapy, significantly increased the Disease Control rate, and prolonged the median Time to Progression and median Progression Free Survival in these patients, as compared to chemotherapy alone.

Phase II/III clinical trials of E10A are expected to be initiated by 2017 in North America.

Download the executive summary to learn more about Marsala Biotech and E10A.

Cancer Treatment

Cancer chemotherapy strives to cause a lethal cytotoxic event in the cancer cell that can arrest a tumour's progression. The attack is generally directed against metabolic sites essential to cell replication including, for example the availability of purines and pyrimidines that are the building blocks for DNA or RNA synthesis. Ideally these anticancer drugs should interfere only with cellular processes that are unique to malignant cells. Unfortunately most currently available anti-cancer drugs do not specifically recognize neoplastic cells, but rather affect all proliferating cells, both normal and abnormal.

Gene Therapy

Gene therapy is a technology which uses DNA as a pharmaceutical agent to supplement or alter genes within an individual as a therapy to treat disease. Marsala's product E10A uses the Endostatin gene to prevent angiogenesis (blood vessel growth), and shut off the nutrient supply to tumors, starving the tumors and leading to tumor shrinkage.

Small Molecules

Marsala Biotech has an in-house drug discovery program to develop new chemical entities (NCEs) for the treatment/management of cancer.