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news.CytRx, a biopharmaceutical research and development company specializing in oncology, has announced the appointment of Dr Felix Kratz as vice president of drug discovery and Dr André Warnecke as senior director of drug discovery.
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Drs Kratz and Warnecke and their scientific team will expand the Corporation’s novel albumin-binding anti-cancer drug pipeline.
Dr Kratz, one of the most highly regarded conjugation chemists in oncology, joins CytRx with 25 years of experience in drug discovery and research.
Dr Kratz’s research includes the development of novel, targeted molecules for cancer therapies, with a special emphasis on the use of albumin as a targeting agent.
His research in preclinical and early clinical development of these therapies has led to the creation of a number of new cancer-fighting agents that use albumin to concentrate chemotherapeutics inside cancers, including the invention of CytRx’s lead compound, aldoxorubicin.
Dr Kratz has been at the forefront of designing novel agents, using various linker chemistries to create a variety of protein-drug conjugates.
Dr Warnecke comes to CytRx with 16 years of experience in chemistry research, including the development of chemical architectures for innovative drug release mechanisms and albumin conjugates of anti-cancer agents.
The new laboratory, located in Freiburg, Germany, will conduct discovery and translational research to create drug candidates that utilize novel linker technologies that couple chemotherapeutic agents and proteins either inside the body or externally, and then concentrate drug in tumors.
The work done at the laboratory will generate new pipeline product candidates and thereby enable expansion of the company’s existing patent portfolio, adding to intellectual property that was originally developed by the KTB Tumor Biology Center in Freiburg and licensed exclusively to CytRx.
Prior to joining CytRx, Dr Kratz was the Head of the Division Macromolecular Prodrugs, which he founded in 1994, in the Clinical Research Department at the Tumor Biology Center (KTB TumorforschungsGmbH) in Freiburg, Germany.
Dr. Kratz was in charge of preclinical drug development and organizing and managing translational research from the laboratory to the clinic. His research areas are drug targeting, drug delivery systems in oncology, prodrugs, receptor and antigen targeting, bioconjugate chemistry, polymer therapeutics and nanocarriers.
Dr Warnecke previously served on Dr. Kratz’s research team as head of Chemistry, division Macromolecular Prodrugs in the Clinical Research Department at the Tumor Biology Center in Freiburg, Germany.
CytRx is currently conducting a Phase II clinical trial evaluating aldoxorubicin in patients with late-stage glioblastoma (brain cancer). In late 2013, the company reported highly statistically significant results from its global Phase IIb clinical trial evaluating aldoxorubicin as a first-line therapy in patients with soft tissue sarcomas.
In this trial, aldoxorubicin demonstrated 80-100% superiority over doxorubicin in progression-free survival (PFS). Median PFS, six-month PFS and overall response rates all significantly favored aldoxorubicin treatment over doxorubicin.
Aldoxorubicin is also being studied in a Phase II clinical trial in HIV-related Kaposi’s sarcoma. CytRx plans to initiate, under a special protocol assessment, a pivotal Phase III global clinical trial with aldoxorubicin as a therapy for patients with soft tissue sarcomas in the first quarter of 2014.