Pintex Pharmaceuticals today announced that the presence of the Pin1 enzyme, which has been linked to numerous cancers, has been identified as an "excellent" indicator of the severity of prostate cancer, which could help doctors determine whether patients will benefit from surgery aimed at treating the disease.
In an article published in today's issue of Cancer Research, researchers described the Pin1 enzyme as "an independent marker that outperforms many other known and currently used" indicators of prostate cancer disease-free survival.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer, and the second leading cause of cancer deaths, in American men, according to the American Cancer Society.
"This is very exciting because it improves our ability to predict the outcome of newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients," said Janusz M. Sowadski, founder and president of Pintex, and a co-author of the article. "It also means that the amount of Pin1 present in pre-therapy biopsies may allow doctors to counsel patients diagnosed with potential prostate cancer to wait and see, thereby avoiding or at least delaying surgery or radiation therapy."
Co-author Thomas M Wheeler, Harlan J. Spjut Professor and associate chairman of the Department of Pathology at Baylor College of Medicine, concurred, saying, "Pin 1 has excellent potential to be an important diagnostic marker that will be tied to a specific targeted therapy for prostate cancer."
Also contributing to the article were DaGong Wang and Lere Bao, also of Pintex. Other co-authors include Kun Ping Lu, a co-discoverer of the Pin1 enzyme and chairman of the Pintex scientific advisory board, and Gerburg Wulf, both of Harvard Medical School; and Gustavo E. Ayala, Anna Frolov, and Rile Li of Baylor College of Medicine.
Cancer Research, published by the American Association for Cancer Research, is the most frequently cited cancer journal in the world.
According to Pintex, Pin1 overexpression may be correlated with the aggressiveness and clinical outcome of many human cancers, in addition to prostate cancer, and may be one of the most prevalent tumor markers found to date.
In addition to treating cancers, the Pin1 enzyme may play a healing role in Alzheimer's disease. According to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the discovery of Pin1 in nerve tissue "may aid in researchers' quest for new therapies to treat Alzheimer's disease and other so-called neurodegenerative diseases that disable the brain."
Pintex currently has rights in more than 75 patent applications and/or issued patents, and the portfolio is continually expanding, focusing on the Pin1 target. To date, the patent rights of the company also include issued patents throughout the world providing broad patent protection for compositions of matter, including Pin1 DNA, Pin1 polypeptides, peptide and peptide mimetic inhibitors of Pin1, as well as methods for inhibiting the activity of the Pin1 enzyme using peptides, peptide mimetics, and small organic molecules.
Pintex expects to start preclinical development shortly on a small-molecule Pin1 inhibitor.
The market for new cancer therapeutics is large and growing. Current annual global spending on cancer therapeutics, estimated to be $25 billion, is expected to grow about 3.5 percent a year over the next several years.