Researchers from Yale University School of Medicine used cancer cell lines established from patients who had failed to respond to standard anticancer drugs. In the laboratory, these cells are highly resistant to anticancer drugs, including docetaxel (Taxotere). Phenoxodiol was able to restore sensitivity to docetaxel in these resistant cells.
The researchers also found that the synergistic effect of phenoxodiol was so great that, when added to the treatment mix, phenoxodiol increased by at least 100 times the amount of docetaxel to be used as effectively as docetaxel alone on cells previously found to be docetaxel-resistant.
“These findings offer two potential clinical outcomes. Either, phenoxodiol could be used to considerably increase the response rate of patients to docetaxel after they have become unresponsive to other standard chemotherapies, or, phenoxodiol could lead to a dramatically reduced amount of chemotherapy needed to achieve a clinical response, which means that patients would be less likely to experience the harmful side effects of chemotherapy,” said Dr Gil Mor, associate professor, department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at Yale University School of Medicine.
Phenoxodiol was granted fast-track status by the FDA in November 2004 after receiving clinical data, including tumor measurements based on radiographic examination, from the current phase Ib/IIa study in ovarian cancer patients.
Phenoxodiol was developed by Australian firm Novogen Limited, which has licensed Marshall Edwards Inc the rights to bring the drug to the global market.