The latest anti-cancer drug from L.E.A.F. Pharmaceuticals, LEAF-1401, has proven to be 80 times more effective in humans compared with existing drugs for lung and colorectal cancer diseases, the company said this week.
The lead anticancer drug of the organization was introduced at this year’s Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the world’s largest cancer meeting, which took place from May 29-31.
LEAF officials said LEAF-1401 treatment exposes the tumor to 20-fold more than conventional existing drugs, which paves the way for the launch of the new drug onto the market for use.
Dr. Clet Niyikiza, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of LEAF stated that the latest drug is more effective on the market than more conventional drugs including Alimta, one of the world’s leading backbone chemotherapies for lung cancer.
“Our new drug LEAF-1401 demonstrates perfect capability of hitting lung and colorectal cancers with a punch that is 80-fold more powerful than the currently worldwide approved drug Alimta,” he said.
Alimta is an anticancer drug that was developed as a 23-year-old Lilly Senior Research Fellow at Eli Lilly and Company under joint patents of late Professor Ted Taylor at Princeton University and Dr. Niyikiza.
LEAF-1401 is one of the four new generations of cancer drugs that received positive reviews from the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) in 2018, allowing the initiation of a first-in-human clinical trial and a potential path for the drug’s registration.
Dr. Niyikiza sees the selection by the ASCO Science Committee of LEAF-1401 for presentation at this year’s annual meeting as a milestone in recognizing the future role that this new product is expected to play in the treatment of cancer by the world’s leading cancer experts.
“We are getting ready to treat patients with LEAF-1401 toward the end of this year,” he told this publication.
LEAF received positive feedback from the US FDA in 2018 on three other new-generation cancer drugs, and Dr. Niyikiza said at the time that clinical trials could take 2-5 years depending on the strength of the clinical results before they can be officially registered
It was expected to take between $100 and $200 million to get the job done, and clinical trials were to be conducted in Boston’s Mass General Hospital, Paris’ Gustave Roussy Institute, and Sweden’s Karolinska.
Dr. Niyikiza told this publication that the laboratory infrastructure and human experience was intended to be duplicated in Rwanda at LEAF US facility, where the first work on such drugs was carried out.
Dr Niyikiza is a scientist from Rwanda who founded L.E.A.F. Pharmaceuticals in 2014.
L.E.A.F. has filed more than 85 patent applications to defend its intellectual property since starting operations in August 2014.