Technology

Treatment Focus & Approach

Proacta's current compounds are small-molecule prodrugs utilizing the uniqueness of hypoxia as a marker in tumor selection.

Hypoxia in tumors is identified by a lack of adequate oxygen supply and is known to increase malignancy. More than 65 percent of the 10 million people who are diagnosed with cancer each year have areas of significant hypoxia in their cancer tumors. Hypoxic regions of tumors are resistant to current radiation and chemotherapy treatments. It is believed that relapse of treated cancers is often due to the ability of cancer cells in hypoxic regions to survive existing treatments.

Cancer-related prodrugs are a new generation of cancer drugs uniquely targeting physiological attributes of solid tumors through normal metabolic processes. The use of a prodrug increases the selectivity of the drug for a targeted tumor. As prodrugs are compounds that remain inert in the body until activated within a specific hypoxic location, they have a greater potential to kill cancer cells while leaving normal cells and tissues unharmed. As prodrugs generally have low cytotoxicity (toxic to cells) prior to activation, side-effects are markedly reduced.