Plexxikon/Roche's PLX4032 hailed as cancer's 'penicillin moment'

A new cancer drug candidate discovered by the USA’s Plexxikon and licensed to Swiss drug major Roche (SIX: ROG.VX) in a $335 million deal, hit the news headline big time yesterday after a report by the UK’s public broadcaster the BBC in a lengthy spot interviewing researchers hailed the compound - PLX 4032 - as "one of the most exciting new cancer drugs in a generation" and describing it as “cancer’s penicillin moment.”

PLX 4032 is one of the first in a new class of drugs specifically designed to target the abnormal molecular activity resulting from an individual genetic mutation - in this case the B-RAF gene, which is stuck in the "on" position in malignant melanoma. Its chemical structure is described in a paper in the journal Nature, which outlines the drug's discovery, development and functioning.

The findings support recently published data from the New England Journal of Medicine showing that nearly all mutation-positive patients in a Phase 1 clinical trial of PLX4032 experienced some tumor shrinkage (The Pharma Letter August 26).