“Targeted Transferrin Transport Technology”

The Company has developed a strategy to increase the efficacy and lessen the toxicity of cancer chemotherapy by binding heavy metals and coupling chemotherapeutic drugs to the serum protein transferrin. Transferrin is the serum protein that transports iron to sites of absorption, utilization and storage. Iron is an essential micronutrient for DNA synthesis, and all cancer cells require huge amounts of iron for DNA synthesis and rapid cell growth. Cancer cells express numerous transferrin receptors on their cell surface, while normal cells express minimal receptors.

Therefore, with our transferrin transport technology (TTT), we can deliver cytotoxic agents targeted selectively to the cancer cell, and thus, have little effect on normal cells.

Our transferrin compounds are of two types:

These agents alone and in combination demonstrate tremendous cancer cell killing with little effect on normal cells. They have also been shown to potentiate the effect and lessen the toxicity of conventional chemotherapy if given as pretreatment prior to the chemotherapy. One of the compounds (cis-platinum-transferrin) has been shown to be an especially good radiation sensitizer, and potentiate the effects of Adriamycin when used as a pretreatment agent.

The Company is also involved in attacking iron metabolism of cancer cells by many other approaches. We disrupt intracellular iron metabolic pathways and prevent iron storage to the protein ferritin. We have technology to modulate transferrin receptors on the surface of cancer cells, which gives us much flexibility in using all of our approaches. Some of the intracellular methods use our genetic technology, which will be discussed in the section on antisense.

Some of the (TTT) agents have been shown to be an immune stimulant and thus enhance host immunity in the cancer patient. We are learning a great deal in this area and are convinced this will improve our tumor immunology and cancer vaccine program.