Radiopharm Theranostics Ltd (ASX:RAD) has welcomed the publication of an authoritative analysis of the protein LRCC15’s role in cancer growth by Dr Shannon J Turley and her team of more than 30 scientists in the peer-reviewed scientific journal ‘Nature’.
Dr Turley’s team demonstrated that LRRC15 plays a key role in defending tumour cells from the body’s immune system, an essential component of tumour cell growth.
The research team was able to downgrade the expression of LRRC15 in aggressive tumour cells with the use of an ‘elegant’ knock-out mouse model they developed.
DUN19 as an answer to LRRC15
Radiopharm is advancing a monoclonal antibody called DUNP19 – originally developed by H David Ulmert, MD, PhD, and colleagues – which the company intends to use in a clinical trial replicating Dr Shannon’s work on LRRC15.
DUNP19 will be labelled with a high-energy radioactive isotope (RAD 502). The treatment is expected to kill the tumour cells directly while also attacking the surrounding cells in the tumour microenvironment (TME) that protects the cancer from being attacked by the immune system.
Radiopharm says the publication of this evidence in Nature strengthens its already robust assessment of LRRC15 as a biomarker for aggressive malignancies.