Bionomics managing director Deborah Rathjen at their offices in Thebarton. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe Source: The Advertiser

ADELAIDE biotech Bionomics has launched multi-site clinical trials of its BNC105 anti-cancer compound in women with ovarian cancer.

The compound is already being tested in renal cancer patients in the US and it is also being investigated against mesothelioma.

The company expects up to 134 women to be enrolled in Phase I trials (to determine the best dose) and Phase II trials (to determine the response rate) at 18 sites in Australia, New Zealand and the US, and it will look at the effectiveness of BNC105 in combination with current standard drug therapies.

Bionomics chief executive Deborah Rathjen said preclinical trials had shown that the compound helped improve survival rates in animals with solid tumours.

It shuts down blood vessels in the tumour and starves it, without affecting normal blood vessels, and this effect had been demonstrated in breast, prostate and lung cancer tumours.

"There is extremely promising data around this compound and we anticipate this trial will establish further potential of BNC105 in this new indication to help women suffering ovarian cancer," Dr Rathjen said.

Following successful outcomes, it will look for a licence partner to take the compund to market.

Drugs to treat ovarian cancer totalled about US$2.2 billion in sales in 2011, according to Bionomics.

In Australia, ovarian cancer is the ninth most commonly diagnosed cancer in women, with 1272 women diagniosed with the disease in 2008, and the seventh leading cause of cancer death in women. In the US, there were 21,880 new cases and 13,850 deaths attributed to the disease.

Bionomics said Phase I trials on renal cancer patients (with metastatic renal cell carcinoma, a form of kidney cancer) has shown the drug is well tolerated and had achieved "disease stabilisation" in some patients. It was also as effective as the market leading drug, Pfizer-made Sutent, in reducing tumour size in animals, it said.

Bionomics will report its clinical data results for the renal cancer and mesothelioma trials at the American Society for Clinical Oncology annual meeting next month.

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