Improving the chemotherapy experience

Chemotherapy is the foundation of cancer treatment because it is so effective, but it is also the downfall of cancer treatment because it is so toxic.

Patients can experience hair loss, nausea, fatigue, aching, or neuropathy and often find that the treatment seems worse than the disease. Imagine the impact a technology would have on cancer treatment if that technology maintains or even improves the efficacy of established chemotherapies without the harmful side effects. And that is what Peptinovo aims to do.

Peptinovo Biopharma Inc. has invented and patented a targeted, drug-delivery platform: Peptide-Amphiphile Lipid Micelle (PALM) that reduces or eliminates chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), one of the most serious side effects threatening treatment outcomes for world-leading chemotherapy drugs like paclitaxel. PALM delivers higher doses of proven drugs INTO tumors, keeping them AWAY from healthy tissues. Lives are extended and side effects avoided.

Peptinovo is developing its first platform, PNB-281, to eliminate the peripheral neuropathy caused by paclitaxel a world-leading chemotherapy drug used against many major cancers. Peripheral neuropathy is the most serious side-effect threatening the ability to complete the cancer treatment and jeopardizing patients’ well-being long after the other effects have faded.

Peptinovo’s technology can be used to treat many cancers and it can be used with many chemotherapy drugs.  We will initially focus on ovarian cancer patients as paclitaxel chemotherapy is the standard of care and patients often suffer a high degree of the pain, tingling, numbness, and weakness of peripheral neuropathy.  Learn more.

Using Nanotechnology Peptinovo’s targeted drug-delivery platform (PALM) safely carries higher doses of proven drugs directly to tumors while keeping them away from healthy tissue.

Peptinovo’s targeted drug-delivery platform (PALM) safely carries higher doses of proven drugs directly into tumors while keeping them away from healthy tissue.

Treatment success is improved, and nerve damage avoided. Drugs are modified to look like fats and enclosed in the PALM nanoparticle for transport in the blood stream. 

The drug is only released after PALM is captured by a fat uptake pathway common to cancer cells but not found in nerves. PALM is adaptable to a wide variety of proven drugs. The first product is a patented derivative of the world-leading chemotherapy drug paclitaxel (PX).

The technology was successfully validated in animal studies where PX in PALM outperformed standard PX in tumor reduction while avoiding damage to nerves.