The Department of Industry and Businesses for the Ecological and Digital Transition of the Government of Navarra financed the COLON HDAC6 project in which a discovery was made which could mean a advances in the treatment of colon cancer.
The company IKAN Biotechnology and the University of Navarra were tasked with carrying out this investigation for which detected that the UDCA8 molecule has “strong potential” in the treatment faced with this type of cancer. The grant that the consortium received to carry out this project amounts to 711,843.53 euros.
To make this discovery, the Biotechnology company IKAN began developing a series of compounds that were evaluated against different samples of colon tumor. Once this first step has been completed, CIMALAB diagnostics was responsible for the development and validation of a technique allowing the quantification of these tumor cells. For this, zebra fish were used, which made it possible to evaluate the zebra fish samples sent by IKAN Biotech and to assess the effectiveness of the molecules tested.
After this process, two were chosen molecules (UDCA1 and UDCA8) and the Pharmacokinetics and Toxicokinetics Group of the University of Navarra were commissioned to carry out a study on mice to evaluate the effectiveness against tumor in an animal model. Subsequently, in view of the results, the UDCA8 molecule was retained and the toxicology group carried out a new toxicity study in rats after administration in repeated doses for 14 days, They explain themselves in a press release from the government of Navarre.
The conclusion of this investigation It seems that this molecule has “high potential” in the treatment of this tumor, but presents a difficulty “due to its low solubility”. This fact means that definitive conclusions have not yet been drawn since “it would be necessary to improve this solubility, either by chemically modifying the structure of the molecule, or by a galenic study”.
This investigation was framed in the call for strategic R&D projects that the Department of Industry and Digital Ecological and Commercial Transition of the Government of Navarre meets every year. The objective of these projects is to “promote the implementation of high-impact projects aligned with the sectors identified in the Navarra Smart Specialization Strategy (RIS4)“.
In this specific case, the project was framed within the framework of the reto SIBERIAinnovative solutions in biotechnology for energy, health issues, industry and agriculture, developed over the last three years.
