A Dallas-based biotechnology company has been given the green light to begin human trials for a new cancer drug developed using AI.
Lantern Pharma announced in a press release on Monday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its drug LP-184 for human testing. The first human phase of this clinical trial should begin this summer.
LP-184 targets advanced solid tumors, which often appear as the result of aggressive forms of cancer affecting the pancreas, bladder, breasts, brain, and central nervous system.
Lantern Pharma currently has two other drugs being tested on cancer patients in clinical trials, according to its website.
In order to save time and money, the biotech firm uses proprietary AI technology to help develop its drugs and run preclinical data on their efficiency.
“We could not have done this without AI in the amount of time that we did it,” Lantern Pharma CEO and President Panna Sharma told The Dallas Morning News. “AI was used in every aspect of development, so we probably shaved … at least 2 to 3 years off the development cycle and probably tens of millions of dollars as a result of using our AI platform.”
Its platform is called RADR and it can leverage more than 25 billion oncology-related data points on a given drug.
As Sharma explained to the DMN, this allows scientists to know “where it’s going to work, how it’s going to work, what cancer it’s going to work in” even before human testing.
Data from RADR have an 80% prediction success rate, according to Lantern Pharma’s website.
If proven safe and effective in the trials, the company projects that LP-184 could see annual sales of $11 to $13 billion, according to the press release.
Sharma explained that LP-184 is unique in the existing drug market because it targets cancers causing the most tissue damage.
“And the more aggressive the cancer, almost like the more it shows up, the more it’s active. We’re very excited about this drug being a potential blockbuster in these aggressive cancers where there’s oftentimes no treatment today,” Sharma told the DMN.
One potential application of LP-184 is in a rare pediatric brain cancer called atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumors. Most of those diagnosed with this form of cancer are children under age 3, and the survival rate is poor.
Cutting-edge treatments in the field of oncology have been making headlines lately.
For instance, a recent small-scale trial of a new personalized vaccine targeting cancerous growths on the pancreas showed promise, as The Dallas Express reported.
These advances are timely, considering that the prevalence of cancer in the U.S. is rising. The National Cancer Institute reported in 2020 that the annual rate of new cancer cases at 442.4 per 100,000 people.
Increases in cancer rates could be due in part to the rise of obesity. Obesity increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and certain cancers, the first and second leading causes of death nationwide, respectively. Obesity rates in Dallas-Fort Worth are some of the worst in the country, as The Dallas Express reported.
