Sanofi-Aventis plans to begin testing a novel compound that is designed to starve liver cancer to death in a phase one human clinical trial in China and possibly South Korea in 2013. The compound, called slit-trap, was developed by its Chinese collaborator, Shanghai Institutes of Biological Sciences, and will soon be ready for a “first-in-man” trial. “It is now in pre-clinical (stage) and is going into clinic early next year,” said chief executive officer Christopher Viehbacher in an interview in Hong Kong.
