Mr. Culley: The company is in the midst of a restart, so in many ways it has a very short history. In prior years, ADVENTRX was engaged in developing a traditional new chemical entity, but that program faced many difficulties and was extremely expensive. We believed, both fundamentally and in light of the current environment, that our stockholders would be best served by pursuing a faster, lower-cost, lower-risk drug development strategy. We're still addressing cancer, but we've moved away from high-risk programs to focus on improving already-approved drugs. In particular, we leverage our proprietary emulsion technology to reformulate existing drugs without changing their underlying pharmacokinetics. The drugs we are focused on today were acquired in 2006.
TWST: What are your leading therapies?
Mr. Culley: We currently have two programs, both of which are new formulations of cancer chemotherapeutics. One of them is a new formulation of vinorelbine, a drug commonly used to treat breast cancer and non-small cell lung cancer. This product candidate, known as ANX-530, was designed to reduce phlebitis, a severe injection site reaction, which is a common problem with off-the-shelf generic versions of vinorelbine. Our formulation was designed to reduce this side effect without affecting the underlying pharmacokinetics or efficacy of vinorelbine. The other product that we are developing is ANX-514, which is a detergent-free formulation of docetaxel. Docetaxel is widely known by its brand name, Taxotere, and is used to treat solid tumors such as breast, lung, prostate and gastric cancers. A big problem with Taxotere is that it's formulated with detergent, and the detergent can cause side effects such as hypersensitivity reactions. To mitigate these side effects, physicians often pre-treat patients with steroids, but these have costs and themselves have side effects. Our formulation, known as ANX-514, is completely detergent-free, so we obviously wouldn't expect to observe any of the side effects which are caused by detergent. We're trying to provide alternatives to currently available chemotherapies but without starting from scratch and reinventing the wheel, so to speak.
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