Omniox, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company with a new protein-based platform (H-NOX) that has been engineered to make radiation therapy more effective for certain brain tumors.
The lead H-NOX product (OMX-4.80) is being developed in partnership with UC San Francisco Division of Neurooncology and is funded by a $7.5 million grant from the National Cancer Institute. OMX-4.80 is being developed as an oxygen delivery carrier for reversing hypoxia in glioblastoma (GB), the most common and aggressive primary brain tumor.
Although widely used in cancer therapy, the effectiveness of radiation is limited by certain factors such as tumor hypoxia.
Hypoxic cancerous tumors are known to be 2-3 times less sensitive to radiation than oxygenated tumors. This discovery has accelerated research in the discovery of agents that can safely deliver oxygen to hypoxic cancer tissue to re-oxygenate and make radiation effective.
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Patients diagnosed with large hypoxic tumors often have only several months to live. Hypoxia in GB is to blame for poor treatment responses to the standard of care radiotherapy/chemotherapy that rely on oxygen to be effective. Hypoxia also promotes tumor invasion and spreading. Pre-clinical studies in animal models of human GB have demonstrated that a single dose of OMX-4.80 overcomes hypoxia and improves tumor-killing and survival compared to radiotherapy treatment alone. This data has encouraged the addition of new therapeutic options such as OMX-4.80 that address tumor hypoxia to the current standard of care in combating this deadly cancer. In addition to glioblastoma, OMX-4.80 may also benefit other cancers such as head-and-neck, pancreatic, lung, and prostate cancers where hypoxia predicts poor outcomes.
The H-NOX platform has competitive advantage over other proteins that have been developed as therapeutics for oxygen delivery. These include hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers that are highly effective at delivering oxygen to tissue. However, they were found to have a major disadvantage due to their ability to scavenge nitric oxide causing hypoxic vasodilation, hypertension and organ toxicity. Oxygen-binding proteins in the H-NOX platform have a competitive advantage over hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers as they are usually non-reactive to nitric oxide and are non-toxic even at supra-therapeutic doses. In addition, the H-NOX proteins have been engineered to finely tune their size, ability to bind and release their gas payload and other characteristics for optimal therapeutic activity. This versatility allows the targeting and release of carrier gas such as oxygen directly into the hypoxic tissue instead of premature release in the blood stream post-intravenous delivery. CEO and co-founder Dr. Stephen Cary said that “Hypoxia has long been known to be a major limiting factor in radiotherapy, and many approaches to oxygenate tumors have been tried. We are excited about our tuned oxygen carriers, and the preclinical data are promising, but we know there is still a long way to go in patients before we have a therapy.”
Omniox was spun out of the University of California Berkeley and was formerly housed in QB3 Garage on the Mission Bay campus of the University of California, San Francisco. It was the only company to receive the NCI Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) 2012 bridge award. The company has raised slightly more than $3 million in angel money and is in the midst of a new round.
The money will be used for proof of concept experiments and comparative oncology clinical trials in veterinary patients. The company is poised to file an IND application in the next 12-24 months. The H-NOX platform is protected by patents in both the U.S. and Europe. In the future, Omniox intends to develop its H-NOX platform for other hypoxic indications beyond cancer that could include cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases.
