Evgen pleased with preclinical data on SFX-01

Clinical-stage drug development company Evgen Pharma announced preclinical data demonstrating that ‘SFX-01’ was effective in in-vitro models of certain blood cancers on Tuesday.

The AIM-traded firm said the data was generated by Dr Eleni Louka and professor Adam Mead of the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford University.

It said the study investigated the effect of SFX-01 on cells from tissue donated by patients with juvenile myelomonocytic leukaemia (JMML), through the UK paediatric MDS/JMML study.

Those patients carry a specific mutation of the PTPN11 gene.

The company said the data demonstrated “significant” reduction of cell proliferation and increased apoptosis, or cell death, of JMML stem cells in the presence of SFX-01, compared to normal controls.

It also showed that SFX-01 “significantly impacted” cell proliferation and increased cytotoxicity in GDM-1 cells, an acute myelomonocytic leukaemia cell line.

Evgen said that while it was preliminary data from a small sample size, it was “encouraged” to observe a statistically significant effect in reducing cell proliferation and increasing apoptosis.

The PTPN11 gene codes for the SHP2 protein, and in January, Evgen announced in-vitro and in-vivo data generated by professor Philip Eaton at Queen Mary University of London demonstrating that SFX-01 modified SHP2.

Mutations of the PTPN11 gene are among the commonest molecular defects described in JMML patients, indicating that SFX-01 should be investigated further as a potential disease modifying agent in PTPN11-mutated haematological malignancies, the company added.0

Evgen said it was now assessing the optimal preclinical and clinical strategy for a development programme of SFX-01 in blood cancers such as JMML and AML.

“The data from Oxford and Queen Mary's shows a very exciting opportunity to extend our oncology pipeline by adding blood cancers to the ongoing metastatic breast cancer and glioblastoma programmes,” said chief executive officer Dr Huw Jones.

“We are grateful to professor Eaton, professor Mead and Dr Louka for their thoughtful and well conducted work on these important cancers.”

At 1520 BST, shares in Evgen Pharma were up 11.97% at 5.24p.