BEVERLY, MA--(Marketwire - August 06, 2012) - Cellceutix Corporation (OTCBB: CTIX) (the “Company”), a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering small molecule drugs for hard to treat diseases, announced today that Kevetrin™, the Company’s flagship anti-cancer drug, has been received at the pharmacies at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for the commencement of clinical trials. Further, Cellceutix is also pleased to report that the trial details are expected to be viewable on the www.clinicaltrials.gov website this week.
“To date, everything is completed and we are waiting for the host hospitals to begin dosing patients, which we anticipate will happen shortly, but it is in the hospitals’ hands at this point,” commented Dr. Krishna Menon, Chief Scientific Officer at Cellceutix. “Throughout my career, I have evaluated and seen many new drug candidates go from start to finish through the regulatory pathway and I am extremely optimistic and excited about the potential of Kevetrin™ because of our data collected during extensive studies and the p53 connection as the Mechanism of Action. I’m not aware of any other anti-cancer compound at this stage of development that could have such a dramatic impact in the field of oncology. Dana-Farber is one of the few hospitals in the world that collects data ‘mapping’ the human genome as related to tumor profiling and the information that will be collected from our clinical trials of Kevetrin™ could prove an invaluable asset to those suffering from cancer and to Cellceutix.”
On a side note, Cellceutix would like to congratulate the men’s U.S. Olympic basketball team as well as Cellceutix Advisor, Dream Team 2 Assistant Coach Jim Boeheim, on its record-setting performance last Wednesday and wishes the team continued success in their quest for the gold medal.
To learn more about Kevetrin™ and the potent anti-cancer activity that it has demonstrated across multiple cancer lines, please visit: http://www.cellceutix.com/product-candidates/kevetrin-our-lead-compound.html
About Kevetrin™
As a completely new class of chemistry in medicine, Kevetrin™ has significant potential to be a major breakthrough in the treatment of solid tumors. Mechanism of action studies showed Kevetrin’s unique ability to affect both wild and mutant types of p53 (often referred to as the “Guardian Angel Gene” or the “Guardian Angel of the Human Genome”) and that Kevetrin strongly induced apoptosis (cell death), characterized by activation of Caspase 3 and cleavage of PARP. Activation of p53 also induced apoptosis by inducing the expression of p53 target gene PUMA. p53 is an important tumor suppressor that acts to restrict proliferation by inducing cell cycle checkpoints, apoptosis, or cellular senescence.
In more than 50 percent of all human carcinomas, p53 is limited in its anti-tumor activities by mutations in the protein itself. Currently, there are greater than 10 million people with tumors that contain inactivated p53, while a similar number have tumors in which the p53 pathway is partially abrogated by inactivation of other signaling components. This has left cancer researchers with the grand challenge of searching for therapies that could restore the protein’s protective function, which Kevetrin appears to be doing the majority of the time.
About Cellceutix
Headquartered in Beverly, Massachusetts, Cellceutix is a publicly traded company under the symbol “CTIX”. It is an emerging bio-pharmaceutical company focused on the development of its pipeline of compounds targeting areas of unmet medical need. Our flagship compound, Kevetrin™, is an anti-cancer drug which has demonstrated the ability in pre-clinical studies to regulate the p53 pathway and attack cancers which have proven resistant to today’s cancer therapies (drug-resistant cancers). Cellceutix also owns the rights to seven other drug compounds, including KM-133, which is in development for psoriasis, and KM-391 for the treatment of the core symptoms of autism. More information is available on the Cellceutix web site at www.cellceutix.com.
Safe Harbor Forward-Looking Statements
To the extent that statements in this press release are not strictly historical, including statements as to revenue projections, business strategy, outlook, objectives, future milestones, plans, intentions, goals, future financial conditions, future collaboration agreements, the success of the Company’s development, events conditioned on stockholder or other approval, or otherwise as to future events, such statements are forward-looking, and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The forward-looking statements contained in this release are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made. Factors that may impact Cellceutix’s success are more fully disclosed in Cellceutix’s most recent public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Cellceutix Corp.
Leo Ehrlich
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