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New targeted anti-cancer therapy lights up investors

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PhotoBiotics is pleased to announce the completion of a further funding round to support development of its innovative technology for targeting light-activated anti-cancer drugs to tumours. Following its successful bid for €300,000 of EU funding, the Imperial College London-based spin-out company has just acquired additional funds from a consortium which includes two new investors.

The new financing round comes hot on the heels of PhotoBiotics' latest research results, which show that special tumour-seeking proteins (antibody fragments) deliver light-activated drugs specifically to cancer targets. When illuminated, they cause complete and selective tumour regression in an animal model (published on-line in the International Journal of Cancer).
In photodynamic therapy (PDT), diseased tissues containing light-activated drugs are illuminated with cold laser light. The resulting chain reaction converts oxygen into a highly toxic form that destroys any cells in close proximity.

PDT has successfully treated head and neck, prostate and skin cancers. Compared to other cancer treatments, PDT leaves patients with little cosmetic scarring and there is no possibility of drug resistance developing. But being non-targeted, PDT cannot deliver light-activated drugs specifically to tumours: they can circulate in the body long after treatment, leaving patients prone to acute light-sensitised skin damage.

PhotoBiotics latest proprietary research solves this problem. Called targeted PDT (t-PDT), drugs go specifically to cancerous cells, rapidly leaving the body before they can cause skin damage. Based on its initial highly promising results in animals, PhotoBiotics is completing further pre-clinical studies, and expects to take its technology forward into clinical trials within the next three years, expanding the applications of t-PDT for many more cancers.
On the latest investment, Dr Elizabeth Rollinson, PhotoBiotics' Commercial Director said, "This confirms that our new t-PDT approach is beginning to attract the funding it deserves to make it into a mainstream clinical reality, and we are excited that PhotoBiotics is in the vanguard of developing this innovative technology. The funding round will allow PhotoBiotics to attain value-enhancing milestones in its therapeutic and diagnostic research and development programmes."

For more information on PhotoBiotics' financing, please contact:

Dr Elizabeth Rollinson
Mob: +44 (0)7771 870410.
Email: liz.rollinson@btinternet.com

For more information on PhotoBiotics' technology, please contact:

Dr Mahendra Deonarain
Division of Cell & Molecular Biology, Dept of Life Sciences, Biochemistry Building
Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ., UK.
Tel: (+44) (0)207 594 5318;
Fax: (+44) (0)207 594 5460.
Email: m.deonarain@imperial.ac.uk

And

Dr Lionel R Milgrom, PhotoBiotics Ltd Press Office,
c/o Department of Life Sciences, Biochemistry Building, Imperial College London, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2AZ, UK.
Tel: +44 (0)208 450 8760;
Mob: +44 (0)7970 852156.
Email: mail@photobiotics.com

Notes to editors:
PhotoBiotics' latest research paper is available by clicking this link:-

'Targeted photodynamic therapy with multiply-loaded recombinant antibody fragments', International Journal of Cancer, published online 31 October 2007.