Clinical Candidates

MTL-005 – an enhancement to x-ray irradiation therapy

MTL-005 is a new targeted therapy for cancers treated with conventional radiotherapy.  Extensive pre-clinical studies indicate that the lead compound has the potential to improve the outcome of radiotherapy by a factor of 2 or more and reduce dose-limiting radiation damage to normal tissue.  Effectively MTL-005 is in a position to double the cancer cure rate from ~30% to ~60% and transform the effectiveness of radiotherapy.

MTL-005 is proven to work in tumour model systems and selectively accumulates in solid tumour tissues in excess of 340:1.  True cure rates of 65-70%+ have been achieved; this is an improvement of over 80% compared directly with radiotherapy alone.  The compound is a novel porphyrin and functions in both oxic and hypoxic tumour environments (a significant advantage over more conventional hypoxic cell radiosensitisers). 

MTL-007 – a novel anti-cancer prodrug

The gemcitabine series of ProTides represent the Company’s most advanced ProTide programme and is supported by extensive in vitro data and initial pre-clinical data. Before its purchase by Morvus, Cardiff ProTides had synthesised over 45 ProTides based on the gemcitabine nucleoside. Many of the ProTides have shown much improved activity as compared to gemcitabine in in vitro cancer cell line assays. For example our lead compound shows a marked improvement in activity especially against a prostate cancer cell line, but interestingly, another compound shows a larger improvement against a breast cancer cell line. This illustrates a phenomenon the Company has observed a number of times, that is, different ProTides derived from the same nucleoside have optimal activity against different cancer cell lines. In theory, this gives the opportunity for more than one potential ProTide drug being derived from a single nucleoside drug.

MTL-003 – anti-angiogenic cancer therapy 

MTL-003, which was part of the Cardiff Biologicals acquisition, is Morvus’ lead biological compound and a high priority programme.  It is a novel, hybrid molecule combining anti-angiogenic activity and endothelial cell regulatory activity.   MTL-003 has almost completed its research phase and is almost ready to enter full development.  This protein comprises two functional sequences each with a different mode of action and so has the potential for dual action giving rise to a greater anti-angiogenic activity.

MTL-003 has the following technical advantages over comparable treatments: 

• broader spectrum of actions than other systems;

• direct action on endothelial cells and most importantly on cancer cells;

• dual action opens the possibility of over-coming acquired resistance to anti-angiogenesis therapies.

A method to produce and isolate the hybrid MTL-003 protein using a yeast expression system has been developed and it is expected that this method can be used for large scale production.