PARIS, May 31, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Onxeo S.A. (Euronext Growth Paris: ALONX, Nasdaq First North: ONXEO), « Onxeo », a clinical-stage biotechnology company specializing in the development of innovative drugs targeting tumor DNA Damage response (DDR) in oncology, today announced the formation of a new Scientific Advisory Committee of leading scientific and clinical experts in the fields of DDR, resistance to treatment and more globally, drug development in oncology. The Committee will advise and guide the Company as it advances its proprietary platform of compounds in the DDR field and develops innovative therapeutics that address unmet medical needs and improve the management of cancer patients.

“We feel excited and privileged to be able to work with this eminent group of renowned thought leaders in oncology,” said Judith Greciet, Chief Executive Officer of Onxeo. “Their scientific advice and clinical expertise will be extremely useful to determine the best development strategies for AsiDNA™ and to leverage its unique properties. Furthermore, their support will be particularly valuable to design new and differentiated candidates from our platON™ platform in order to enrich our pipeline of decoy agonists.”

Gilbert Chu, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine (Oncology) and Biochemistry at the Stanford Medical School, commented: “The decoy-agonist technology that Onxeo is developing is a very promising new approach which consists in hijacking the DNA damage response for cancer treatment. AsiDNA™ presents appealing and original anti-tumoral properties which could lead to new therapeutic strategies, particularly for cancers with a high unmet medical need.”

Gilles Favre, PharmD, Medical Biologist, PhD, Director of CRCT (Toulouse Research Center in Cancerology), concluded: “Onxeo is addressing a major unmet need in cancer treatment that is prevention or reversal of tumor drug resistance. The early work performed by our team on combining AsiDNA™ with targeted therapies has shown promising results and I look forward to help advance these developments with my distinguished colleagues.”

The Scientific Advisory Committee will be comprised of the following members:

Gilbert Chu, MD, PhD, is Professor of Medicine (Oncology) and Biochemistry at the Stanford Medical School. He received a B.A. in Physics from Princeton University in 1967, a Ph.D. in Physics from M.I.T. in 1973, and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1980. Gilbert Chu joined the Stanford faculty in 1987. His notable contributions include discovering and characterizing proteins involved in DNA repair and developing instrumentation for assessing toxicity associated with cancer chemotherapy. His research has also investigated how cells react to DNA damage from radiation and chemotherapy.  

Gilles Favre, PharmD, Medical Biologist, PhD, Director of the CRCT (Toulouse Research Center in Cancerology), is currently Professor of Biochemistry and Medical Biology at the University of Toulouse and director of the Clinical and Genetic Oncology Laboratory Medicine at the Institut Universitaire du Cancer de Toulouse-Oncopole for which he serves as the scientific director. His research focuses on cancer cell signaling leading to therapeutic targets identification and translational medicine-based approaches to discover novel biomarkers. Recently, his work was focused on reversing resistance to targeted therapy in lung cancers and melanomas.

Lorenzo Galluzzi, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Cell Biology in Radiation Oncology with the Department of Radiation Oncology of the Weill Cornell Medical College (New York, NY, USA), Honorary Assistant Professor Adjunct at the Yale School of Medicine (New Haven, CT, USA), Honorary Associate Professor with the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Paris (Paris, France), and Faculty Member with several universities in Italy (Ferrara, Padova, Rome). Lorenzo Galluzzi is best known for major experimental and conceptual contributions to the fields of tumor metabolism and tumor immunology, the links between adaptive stress responses in cancer cells and the activation of a clinically relevant tumor-targeting immune response.

Ruth Plummer, FMedSci, MD, PhD, is Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine at the Northern Institute for Cancer Research, Newcastle University and an Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology in Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She leads the Newcastle Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre and also the CRUK Newcastle Cancer Centre. She runs a phase I all-comers practice, taking responsibility for one of the most active phase I unit’s in the UK. Her research interests are in the field of DNA repair and early phase clinical trials of novel agents, taking the first in class PARP inhibitor into the clinic in 2003, ATR inhibitor in 2012 and MCT1 inhibitor in 2014. Her work contributed to the development and validation of pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic assays in early clinical drug development, assays that are now embedded in early phase trial design.

Caroline Robert, M.D., Ph.D., is the Head of the Dermatology Unit at Gustave Roussy and co-director of the Melanoma Research Unit at Paris-Sud University. She trained at the Paris V University, France, and completed a research fellowship at Harvard, Brigham & Women’s hospital in Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy. Her main focuses of interest are clinical and translational research on immunotherapy and targeted therapy. Caroline Robert is national and international coordinator of many clinical trials of targeted therapy and immunotherapy from phase I to III. Her recent work has focused on identification of new biomarkers for immunotherapy and targeted therapies of patients with melanoma.

About Onxeo

Onxeo (Euronext Paris, NASDAQ Copenhagen: ONXEO) is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing innovative oncology drugs targeting tumor DNA-binding functions through unique mechanisms of action in the sought-after field of DNA Damage Response (DDR). The Company is focused on bringing early-stage first-in-class or disruptive compounds from translational research to clinical proof-of-concept, a value-creating inflection point appealing to potential partners.

platON™ is Onxeo’s proprietary chemistry platform of oligonucleotides acting as decoy agonists, which generates new innovative compounds and broaden the Company’s product pipeline.

AsiDNA™, the first compound from platON™, is a first-in-class, highly differentiated DNA Damage Response (DDR) inhibitor based on a decoy and agonist mechanism acting upstream of multiple DDR pathways. Translational research has highlighted the distinctive properties of AsiDNA™, notably its ability to abrogate tumor resistance to PARP inhibitors regardless of the genetic mutation status. AsiDNA™ has also shown a strong synergy with other tumor DNA-damaging agents such as chemotherapy and PARP inhibitors. The DRIIV-1 (DNA Repair Inhibitor-administered IntraVenously) phase I study has evaluated AsiDNA™ by systemic administration (IV) in advanced solid tumors and confirmed the active doses as well as a favorable human safety profile. The ongoing DRIIV-1b extension study is evaluating the safety and efficacy of AsiDNA™ at a dose of 600 mg in combination with the reference chemotherapy, carboplatin -/+ paclitaxel, in advanced metastatic tumors. Preliminary results from both cohorts showed good tolerability, stabilization of the disease and an increase in treatment duration compared to previous treatments. The ongoing REVOCAN phase 1b/2 study evaluates the effect of AsiDNA™ on the acquired resistance to PARP inhibitor niraparib in relapsed ovarian cancer (sponsored by Gustave Roussy). A phase 1b/2 study, AsiDNA™ Children, will be initiated in 2021 to evaluate the association of AsiDNA™ with radiotherapy in children with relapsed high-grade glioma (sponsored by Institut Curie).

OX401 is a new drug candidate from platON™, optimized to be a next-generation PARP inhibitor acting on both the DNA Damage Response and the activation of immune response, without inducing resistance. OX401 is undergoing preclinical proof-of-concept studies, alone and in combination with immunotherapies.

For further information, please visit www.onxeo.com.  

Forward looking statements
This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements concerning Onxeo and its business. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Onxeo to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Onxeo is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For a discussion of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Onxeo to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the risk factors described in the most recent Company’s registration document or in any other periodic financial report and in any other press release, which are available free of charge on the websites of the Company Group (www.onxeo.com) and/or the AMF (www.amf-france.org).

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