Genova files patent for new prostate cancer treatment

GENova Biotherapeutics has filed a patent for a novel peptide that disrupts the advance of prostate cancer and thus has blockbuster potential as a new anti-cancer drug.

The peptide, called Prostaganin, is a 21-amino compound which is highly reactive to prostate cancer cells, and has the ability to specifically target them. In laboratory experiments, Prostaganin has demonstrated an ability to preferentially bind to and disrupt certain negatively charged components of the membranes of prostate cancer cells.

Prostaganin thus has tremendous potential as a superior new form of treating prostate cancer, the company claims. Current treatment methods such as surgery, radiation and chemotherapy are outmoded, unsatisfactory, and have severe side effects. Prostaganin offers a positive alternative. The peptide, bio-engineered from naturally occurring compounds in the human body, can target and destroy cancerous cells, whilst leaving surrounding healthy tissues intact, and causing no undesirable side effects. Further development of this novel peptide could revolutionize the way people fight cancer.

The demand for new and better treatments for prostate cancer has never been higher, comments the company. Prostate cancer presently accounts for 30% of all the major cancers in men. The Prostate Cancer Foundation states that prostate cancer is the cancer with the largest expected increase in the next decade, and that annual incidence of the cancer will rise to 300,000 cases in the USA alone by 2015.