Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 24th April 2024
LightOx develop LXD191 formulation taking them one step further towards innovative mouth cancer treatment
Following years of research, the team at LightOx are proud to be making significant progress in the development of their LXD191 formulation. A novel therapeutic light activated treatment, for early-stage oral cancer.
The treatment, which has been developed in collaboration with clinical teams at NHS Liverpool Head & Neck Centre and formulation specialists, SGS (Formerly known as Quay Pharma) has taken months to complete.
The process has involved LightOx synthesising the lead API, LXD191, and supplying this to SGS’s facility in Deeside, where they were able to look at the key properties of these molecules and their ability to be used in a topical formulation for direct application to the cancer within the mouth.
The teams worked closely together, meeting every two weeks to discuss the project development, the specification needed for the formulations, and taking expert advice on board from clinical partners at the NHS Liverpool Head & Neck Centre.
The project has been a huge success – very much catalysed by the expertise and hard work from all the partners and has resulted in five (and possibly more) prototype gel formulations that can now proceed to further testing at LightOx’s laboratories as we move towards clinic.
Dr David Chisholm, Chemistry Team Leader at LightOx said;
“It’s been a lot of hard work and dedication to get to this point in our journey, but we are delighted to see the development of our LXD191 formulation finally taking shape.
We will now utilise the gel formulations to further our preclinical evidence for LXD191 by carrying out in vitro and in vivo efficacy work and as the basis for carrying out further toxicological and mode of action studies. Taking us one step further in our mission to provide a highly effective and non-evasive mouth cancer treatment.”
Caroline McCarthy, Academic Clinical Lecturer in Oral Medicine, University of Liverpool/Liverpool University Dental Hospital, said;
“It has been great to work closely with LightOx to provide clinical context about the unmet treatment needs in the area of early-stage mouth cancer.
Funding from Innovate UK helped aid the pre-clinical work required to prove that LXD191 works in the way we believe it works. It has been fascinating working with the product development team in order to ensure the consistency of the final product meets our requirements.
Going forward we are hoping to bring the finished product to clinic in 2025. It will be hugely exciting to be able to offer patients an entirely new treatment with great potential to treat their pre-cancerous lesions and I hope that this product will transform the way we manage patients with leukoplakia (pre-cancerous white patches). At present, surgery is required to remove the patches, resulting in pain and scarring. With a gel-based treatment like this, we hope patient acceptance will be much higher compared to surgery.”
For more information about LightOx contact Rebecca Crow, Head of Projects on becky.crow@lightox.co.uk
