Sunapten Therapeutics uses the power of the immune system to fight prostate cancer

A Kalamazoo company is working on a vaccine therapy intended to provide a new option for the treatment of prostate cancer in patients for whom current therapies don’t work.

Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in men in the United States. Nearly 30,000 men die of it each year. Current therapies extend patients lives by an average of two to four months and patients with advanced prostate cancer die withing two years of diagnosis. Approximately 200,000 are diagnosed with prostate cancer annually.

Sunapten Therapeutics Inc. appeared before a large number of investors at a New Enterprise Forum event March 17 to explain its concept as it seeks $7 million needed to move forward in the early development of its targeted vaccine therapy.

Dr. James Mobley, chief science officer for Sunapten, says the pitch was very well received. Now the waiting begins to see what investors will come forward. To date the company has been working with a $250,000 equity investment from an individual investor.

“We are very early in the developmental process, just beyond proof of concept,” Mobley says.  

The company also is seeking funds through the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program and expects to learn soon whether those funds will be made available.

Sunapten’s scientists are developing a technology that would modify cancer cells so the immune system that normally sees cancer cells as part of the body would instead see them instead as foreign and attack them.

The technology uses very specific small organic compounds that the company says “paints a target” on the cancer cell and only the cancer cell. This gives it a “foreign” signature that draws the fire of the antibodies, destroying the modified tumor cell.

Sunapten says its vaccine will be inexpensive to produce, easy to administer, and will have few, if any, side effects.

If clinical trials go as anticipated, the company expects to grow from its current six employees to 100 or more by 2015.

Writer: Kathy Jennings
Source: Jim Mobley, Sunapten Therapeutics Inc.