WEST LAFAYETTE — A cancer targeting innovation discovered more than two decades ago by a Purdue University professor of chemistry and his then-graduate research assistant could be closer to benefiting patients with ovarian and lung cancers and other diseases after receiving positive opinions from clinical trials conducted in the U.S. and Europe.
The drug, vintafolide, is the result of research conducted over the past 24 years ago by Philip S. Low, the Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and director of the Purdue Center for Drug Discovery, and Christopher P. Leamon, then his graduate research assistant. Low is chief science officer at Endocyte Inc., a company created to further develop and commercialize Low's drug innovations, and Leamon is the vice president of research and development of the company.
Leamon added that the positive opinions from the CHMP show the importance of persistence in developing cancer-fighting therapeutics, since many obstacles have been encountered and then solved along this rocky pathway to success.
