Benzinga | Jul 22, 2021 09:26AM EDT

Lixte Biotech Issues Comment On Report Its Protein Phosphatase 2A Inhibitor Combined With Another Investigational Agent Stimulates Bone Growth In Models Of Dwarfism

Lixte Biotechnology Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:LIXTE) a clinical-stage drug discovery company developing pharmacologically active drugs for improving cancer treatments, commented on pre-clinical research demonstrating that inhibition of protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) with LB-100 combined with the experimental drug, vosoritide (BioMarin), was even more effective than vosorotide alone in stimulating bone length and cartilage area in a mouse model of the most common form of dwarfism, achondroplasia (ACH).

In clinical trials, the BioMarin compound alone was beneficial. But the fact that the addition of LB-100 enhanced the activity of vosoritide in the animal models of ACH led the authors to conclude that their study provides a proof of concept that a phosphatase inhibitor may be a beneficial addition to therapy with vosoritide (Shuhaibar et al., JCI Insight 2021).

Lixte CEO, John S. Kovach MD, commented "Our development of LB-100 as the only presently available PP2A inhibitor in clinical trials has opened a multitude of possibilities for adding inhibition of PP2A to therapeutic regimens for a range of serious diseases. LB-100 has been shown to enhance anti-cancer activity of standard chemotherapy and immunotherapy regimens against a broad spectrum of human cancers in animal models. Our focus is to demonstrate the clinical therapeutic benefit of LB-100 in one or more cancers for which more effective treatments are urgently needed. We are concentrating on small cell lung cancer and advanced soft tissue sarcomas. Many investigators of which Shuhaibar and colleagues are among the most recent have used LB-100 in pre-clinical studies that have revealed targeting of PP2A function appears to have a multitude of potential applications to serious human diseases in addition to cancer."