Eisbach Bio GmbH receives a Texas Therapeutics Company Award from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). According to the company, this prestigious grant of US$4.75 million will support the clinical development of Eisbach's first-in-class allosteric small molecule inhibitor EIS-12656 targeting ALC1, a chromatin remodeling enzyme and helicase that represents the molecular Achilles heel in a large subset of difficult-to-treat human cancers, such as pancreatic cancer.
Eisbach Bio's innovative approach focuses on exploiting the unique genetic vulnerabilities present in solid tumors with deficiencies in certain DNA repair pathways. Eisbach’s proprietary ALLOS platform systematically recapitulates the tight controls that strictly regulate the activity of several key cancer-driving molecular machines.
This facilitated the development of a selective drug that exploits and disrupts a specific and unique mechanism that regulates the activation of the molecular machine ALC1 during DNA repair. This disrupts genome reorganization during DNA repair, halting tumor growth and enabling a new therapeutic approach.
The CPRIT grant will help support the work of Eisbach Bio during the Dose Expansion monotherapy Module 1 of its Phase I/II cancer trial, which is led by Dr. Timothy Yap of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. EIS-12656 addresses the unmet medical needs of patients with homologous recombination deficient (HRD) cancers who have experienced failure with standard of care therapies. This includes malignant solid tumors, with or without brain metastases, particularly breast, ovarian, pancreatic and prostate cancers, corresponding to ~40,000 patients per year in the US alone.
CPRIT's Product Development Research Program funds projects at Texas-based companies developing novel products or services intended to benefit cancer patients. Eisbach Bio was the only international company that received an award among 90 applicants. Eisbach Bio will increase its activities and footprint in Texas and continue contributing to the state's exceptional life sciences and biomedicine ecosystems.