Hercules Pharmaceuticals, a Dutch biopharmaceutical company developing innovative anti-cancer drugs will present a poster, Poster LB-128, at the AACR meeting in Chicago on Monday April 16, 2018, from 8:00am-12:00pm, Poster section 45.
The poster will be presented by, amongst others, Prof. David Sherr, co-founder of Hercules and international key opinion leader in the field of cancer immunology at Boston University.
The results presented show that the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor (AhR) is an important driver of cancer and cancer immuno suppression and that AhR inhibition could have powerful anti-cancer effects. Acting downstream of IDO inhibitors, Hercules’ AhR inhibitor HP163 promise to be more effective in blocking the tryptophan>IDO/TDO>kynurenine>AhR pathway.
The crucial role of AhR in cancer was demonstrated in a syngeneic murine cancer model, where animals received cancer cells from which the AhR was removed by Crispr Cas. Absence of AhR in tumor cells completely blocked tumor growth.
Where AhR knock-down shows the maximum achievable effect of AhR inhibition, Hercules’ AhR inhibitor HP163 already demonstrates better tumor growth reduction than IDO inhibitor epacadostat in a syngeneic murine colon cancer model.
It is Hercules’ aim to develop AhR inhibitors that have single agent efficacy in cancer patients. Furthermore, there is good scientific rationale for combining AhR inhibitors with other anticancer approaches, like anti PD-1/L1 antibodies and IDO inhibitors.
About Hercules
Hercules is a private biopharmaceutical company, based in The Netherlands. The company was founded in 2013 to develop and commercialize the inventions of Professor David Sherr, an international key opinion leader in the field of cancer immunology at Boston University. Professor Sherr demonstrated that the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor plays an important role in the occurrence and progression of cancer. He also discovered that blocking the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor with small molecule drugs is a promising and novel way to treat solid tumors, including Triple Negative Breast Cancer, Glioblastoma and Head and Neck cancer. Hercules lead compound HP163 is in pre-clinical development.
