Our Partners
Collaborations are an important component for an early stage company like Cetya. Cetya is seeking to collaborate with academic scientists or potential corporate partners in sickle cell disease or related hemoglobinopathies. If interested, please contact us.
NCI – Cetya has worked with the National Cancer Institute on the assessment of Cetya’s various analogs against the NCI60 tumor panel to look for particular sensitivities against the various tumor types, as well as differential activity compared to marketed HDAC inhibitors such as vorinostat and romidepsin.
Cetya has developed other collaborations with leading institutions to look at upregulation of fetal hemoglobin expression, global gene expression modifications in specific tumor types focusing on up and down-regulated pathways and evaluating the upregulation of MHC Class I proteins in tumor cell membranes to enhance the effectiveness of immuno-oncology approaches.
Dr. Betty Pace is assessing our lead compound, CT-101, in mouse models of sickle cell disease under our joint Phase II STTR grant, evaluating the increase in fetal hemoglobin expression both as the average level of fetal hemoglobin RNA found in red cells as well as the percentage of red cells which contain fetal hemoglobin. The evaluations include looking at the effects of a combination of CT-101 with hydroxyurea, the current standard of care for treating sickle cell disease.
Cetya is working with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) on the assessment of Cetya’s various analogs against the NCI60 tumor panel to look for particular sensitivities against the various tumor types as well as differential activity compared to marketed HDAC inhibitors such as vorinostat and romidepsin.
Dr. Susan Perrine is exploring the use of CT-101 in samples derived from sickle cell disease patients looking for up-regulation of fetal hemoglobin expression following drug exposure in the absence of significant interference in red cell maturation. Much research over the past few decades has shown that even small increases in the level of fetal hemoglobin can mitigate the severity of symptoms associated with sickle cell disease. Drug intervention that aims to increase expression levels of the fetal-globin chain, and thus fetal hemoglobin, is one potential therapeutic approach to reduce the underlying pathology and provide clinical benefit to these patients.
Dr. Richard Koya is a leading investigator exploring the use of engineered T-cells to kill tumor cells expressing the antigen against which the T-cells are directed. Immuno-oncology is an application that is of great interest in cancer therapeutics at present. Dr. Koya has found that CT-102 can up-regulate the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) in tumor cells, making the tumor more visible to the immune system. As a result, the engineered T-cells are more effective in killing the tumor. Potentiation of immuno-oncology approaches represents an area of tremendous potential for Cetya.
Drs. Paul Bunn, Fred Hirsch and Christopher Rivard, in collaboration with Dr. Samir Witta of Golden, CO, are investigating the use of our HDAC inhibitors to treat various lung cancer cell lines derived from patient tumors selected for mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) or KRAS genes. Patients that have these genetic alterations in their tumors are particularly challenging to treat with existing anticancer agents. Initial results show good activity with CT-102 in these tumor lines. Further testing is underway to look at changes in gene expression patterns following exposure of these cell lines to each of the HDAC inhibitors provided by Cetya, followed by in vitro testing of the HDAC inhibitor plus a second anticancer agent selected on the basis of the gene expression data. This work is covered under a local grant from the Cancer Center at the University of Colorado.