Midatech Pharma announces R&D program on leptomeningeal disease

Midatech Pharma announced a new research programme coded MTD217 focusing on developing new therapeutic options for metastatic cancers with high unmet needs. Midatech’s MTD217 programme explores simultaneous inhibition of key metabolic pathways, including the Warburg effect and OXPHOS. The research is centred around a number of new water-soluble drug formulations that can be easily infused or injected simultaneously, or sequentially, directly into the cancer microenvironment, disrupting metabolic functions in a highly localised manner, thus limiting off-target toxicity. The Company has already been able to demonstrate up to a six-fold synergistic effect of administering its formulation of panobinostat, known as MTX110, with an OXPHOS inhibitor in vitro with three patient-derived cells lines. On the back of those data, Midatech has established new patent positions to protect these combination formulations. The Company’s initial target is treatment of leptomeningeal disease, a lethal complication in which metastatic cancer cells invade the cerebrospinal fluid and central nervous system4. In collaboration with several large academic centres, Midatech is now accelerating preclinical studies to generate proof of concept data in this setting that can support a future clinical trial application.