Lantern Pharma Inc. (NASDAQ: LTRN), a leading artificial intelligence (AI) oncology drug discovery and development company, today announced a strategic AI-driven
collaboration with French biotechnology company, Oregon Therapeutics to optimize the development of its first-in-class protein disulfide isomerase (PDI)(1) inhibitor drug candidate XCE853 in novel and targeted cancer indications. Lantern will be leveraging its
proprietary RADR AI platform to uncover biomarkers and efficacy-associated signatures of XCE853 across solid tumors that can aid in precision development. Collaborative efforts are expected to
identify biomarker signatures that can be used to stratify tumors most responsive to XCE853 and guide potential future clinical development and patient selection. Oregon Therapeutics is developing
XCE853 in various cancer indications, including drug-resistant ovarian and pancreatic cancer, certain hematological cancers and several pediatric cancers including CNS cancers.
PDIs are promising targets for cancer therapy raising clinical interest recently2 notably for their potential in cancers of poor prognosis like breast cancer3 or ovarian
cancer. Up-regulated expression of PDIs was found to be associated with worse clinical outcome in numerous cancers such as hepatocellular carcinoma(4), as well as breast and ovarian
cancers(5). PDIs are protein chaperones and are central to maintaining cancer cell metabolism, additionally PDI inhibitors can cause cancer cell death through the accumulation of
impaired proteins and dysregulated cellular stress responses. A combination of these effects is known as proteotoxicity, a unique and promising therapeutic strategy that may be especially effective in targeting cancers that are resistant to therapy.