PhytoMedical Technologies, Inc. (Symbol: PYTO), together with its wholly owned subsidiaries, is an early stage research based biopharmaceutical company focused on the identification, acquisition, development and commercialization of innovative pharmaceutical compounds targeting cancer and hematologic disorders.
A New Class Of Antitumor Agents Designed To Bind To DNA And Kill Cancer Cells.
Cancer kills more than 1,500 Americans each day and is the second leading cause of death in America. Cancer is attributed to one in every four deaths nationally, and accounts for at least one in every ten dollars spent on healthcare. According to the American Cancer Society, 2006 estimates peg direct medical costs (the total of all health expenditures) at $78.2 billion and the total estimated cost of cancer (which includes indirect morbidity and mortality costs) at $206.3 billion.
Currently, at least 9.6 million Americans have been diagnosed with cancer according to National Cancer Institute estimates, with a staggering 1.4 million new cases expected by the end of this year. Despite spending more than $1 trillion to fight the disease in over three decades of research, over half a million Americans are expected to die of cancer this year, with the ‘lifetime risk’ of developing cancer still remaining high: In the US, men have a little less than 1 in 2 lifetime risk of developing cancer; for women the risk is a little more than 1 in 3.
In response, PhytoMedical is working in collaboration with scientists at Dartmouth College to develop new anti-cancer compounds. Dartmouth scientists have synthesized a novel class of antitumor agents with a cytotoxic affinity for cancer cells, designed to bind more tightly to cancer cell DNA than many conventional anticancer drugs by a process called bis-intercalation or “double binding,” much like a molecular staple. Because the DNA is the blueprint of life for the cancer cell, such binding stops the replication of the DNA, which prevents the growth of the cancer cell and it dies.
Working with Dartmouth scientists, PhytoMedical plans to improve upon the concept of bis-intercalation and will evaluate these new compounds against several different cancer cell lines, including prostate, lung, brain and bladder cancer.
