Press Release

Fremont, Calif.—Verseon will present new preclinical studies of its anticancer drug candidates at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting in Chicago next week. Verseon’s tubulin inhibitors are potent against a range of cancer cell lines and may be well-suited for the treatment of hematological and solid tumors resistant to existing chemotherapy agents.

While chemotherapy remains the first line of treatment against most cancers, many tumors develop resistance to chemotherapy agents over time, limiting their efficacy. Cancer cells commonly render drugs ineffective by triggering an overproduction of transport proteins that expel many chemicals, including chemotherapeutics. In addition, cells can become resistant to paclitaxel and vinorelbine, important tubulin-targeting chemotherapy drugs, by overexpression of β-III tubulin.

“Our preclinical data show that Verseon’s new class of tubulin inhibitors maintain their efficacy in a number of cancer cell lines that are resistant to many widely used chemotherapy agents,” said Dr. Mohan Sivaraja, Verseon’s Associate Director of Discovery Biology, who will present the studies at AACR. “The insensitivity of our compounds to the major efflux pumps and to the overexpression of β‑III tubulin are especially promising, since they could help us address the need for a more effective, precise therapy.”

Verseon’s tubulin inhibitors display good in vitro physicochemical properties as well as favorable in vivo pharmacokinetics. In addition to in vitro studies in drug-resistant cell lines, Dr. Sivaraja will also present first in vivo tolerability results. 

Verseon’s full AACR poster abstract can be accessed here. Details of the presentation are as follows:

Poster title: Potent cell cycle inhibitors suitable for treatment of multidrug-resistant tumors

Session title: DNA Damage and Cell Cycle Regulation Experimental Therapeutics

Date: Tuesday Apr 17, 2018

Time: 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Location: McCormick Place South, Exhibit Hall A, Poster Section 38

Verseon uses its innovative computer-driven drug discovery platform to generate new drug candidates for a variety of indications. This platform provides access to many more drug-like molecules than are available to conventional pharmaceutical companies. Verseon currently has active programs in anticoagulation, diabetic macular edema, hereditary angioedema, and oncology.

About Verseon’s oncology program

Verseon plans to use its promising class of tubulin inhibitors to target multidrug resistant cancers. Several drug candidates show potency in functional and cellular assays. Furthermore, Verseon’s inhibitors maintain their efficacy across multiple chemotherapy-resistant cancer cell lines and are either unaffected or only weakly affected by the overexpression of common transporters, a primary source of multidrug resistance.

About Verseon

Verseon Corporation (www.verseon.com, AIM: VSN) is a technology-based pharmaceutical company that pairs a proprietary, computational drug discovery platform with a comprehensive in-house chemistry and biology workflow to develop novel therapeutics that are unlikely to be found using conventional methods. The Company is applying its platform to a growing drug pipeline and currently has four active drug programs in the areas of anticoagulation, diabetic macular edema, hereditary angioedema, and oncology. The anticoagulation program is scheduled to enter phase I clinical trials in 2018.

Last updated on: 12/04/2018