Date: Aug 08, 2013 Source: Business Wire (
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Stemsynergy Therapeutics, Inc., today announced a breakthrough study for treating synovial sarcoma, an aggressive soft tissue cancer that predominantly affects teenagers and young adults. Stemsynergy is a privately held biopharmaceutical company that focuses on the discovery and development of small-molecule drugs targeting developmental pathways fundamental to cancer.
Synovial sarcoma is a high-grade soft tissue cancer that is associated with a chromosomal rearrangement, meaning that chromosomes incorrectly switch positions. This results in production of a protein known as "oncogene SYT-SSX." This protein promotes the uncontrolled cell proliferation that leads to cancer. The 10-year survival rate for individuals with synovial sarcoma is estimated to be as low as 10%. Previously, it was unknown how SYT-SSX caused cancer in people.
In a recent study, published in Cancer Discovery, a group from Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Stemsynergy used mice to show that the SYT-SSX oncogene leads to the activation of a cell signaling process called the "Wnt pathway." This work demonstrated that the Wnt signaling pathway is a master controller for the initiation and growth of synovial sarcomas, and that blocking this pathway can stop tumors from growing.
According to Dr. Josiane Eid, a Vanderbilt University Medical Center scientist who is an expert on synovial sarcoma and lead investigator of the study, "Synovial sarcoma is a devastating disease because it affects young people at the beginning of their lives. We are extremely optimistic that we may have cracked the code for understanding how SYT-SSX leads to the creation of tumors, and we are excited that Stemsynergy's anti-Wnt compound, SSTC-104, was so potent and effective in our mouse tumor models. With no effective therapies for synovial sarcoma in the clinic, we are very hopeful that SSTC-104 or a similar compound will be effective for its treatment."
"We are delighted by the results of this study. SSTC-104 was effective in mice injected with human synovial sarcoma cells as well as a genetic mouse model of synovial sarcoma," said Dr. Darren Orton, Director of Medicinal Chemistry at Stemsynergy and a co-author on the study. "Furthermore, synovial sarcoma is a good model for "Wnt-driven" cancers and this approach is currently being extended to a number of other major cancer types."
SSTC-104 belongs to a novel class of molecules that activates casein kinase 1alpha to inhibit Wnt signaling. Dr. Ethan Lee, a founder of Stemsynergy and an expert on Wnt signaling, first described such a compound in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. Dr. Lee is also a co-author on the present study and a faculty member of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
