NEW YORK – Lantern Pharma on Tuesday said it has partnered with the Greehey Children's Cancer Research Institute at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio to find new applications for its drugs against rare pediatric malignancies.
Dallas-based Lantern and GCCRI will focus on developing Lantern's LP-184 and LP-284 for genomically defined pediatric cancers. GCCRI will initially explore the activity of LP-184 using its pediatric tumor models, developed by GCCRI's Peter Houghton, and gauge the treatment's potential in cancers with limited treatment options, including rhabdomyosarcoma, Ewing sarcoma, malignant rhabdoid tumor, Wilms tumor, and atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumor, or ATRT.
LP-184 is a small molecule agent that has shown activity in tumors overexpressing drivers such as PTGR1 and PTPN14, and Lantern has used its RADR platform to identify several solid tumor indications that highly express these targets.
According to Lantern, both LP-184 and LP-284 have demonstrated the potential to treat multiple pediatric cancers during in silico studies with Lantern's RADR platform, which employs machine learning to identify gene signatures that can be targeted by new therapeutic compounds and guide patient selection in drug trials.
"This collaboration with Dr. Houghton and his lab will help us potentially validate multiple new pediatric indications and also generate insights that may lead to new therapies," Panna Sharma, Lantern's president and CEO, said in a statement.
Recently, Lantern also announced a collaboration with the Danish Cancer Society and Research Center to further develop LP-184 as well as another candidate, LP-100, against tumors with nucleotide excision repair deficiencies.
Last month, the US Food and Drug Administration granted orphan drug designation and rare pediatric disease designation for LP-184 as a treatment for young cancer patients with ATRT, an aggressive central nervous system cancer. Lantern hopes to advance LP-184 into clinical trials later this year.