Kairos Pharma Ltd (NYSEAMERICAN: KAPA) has obtained a sizeable grant to propel its research on lung cancer cell treatment resistance. Studies the funding will be used for are being conducted in Dr. Neil Bhowmick’s lab at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He is the company’s chief scientific officer.
The United States Department of Defense is giving Kairos US$876,000 with the specific aim of limiting patient resistance to the widely-used medication Tagrisso (osimertinib) while “advancing a strategy to identify patients that are starting to develop resistance at an early stage.”
This drug is used to treat those with non-small cell lung cancer that has epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations. About 45,000 people are diagnosed annually, the biotech operator says.
Kairos helps limit patient resistance to osimertinib with its ENV105 antibody treatment. It attacks a protein that lung cancer cells make to resist against it known as CD105.
“Our drug ENV105 is an antibody that reverses the effect of CD105, rendering the cancer responsive to those drugs again,” Kairos explained on its website. For lung cancer, ENV105 is currently being assessed in Phase I trials. Studies on its applications for castrate-resistant prostate cancer drugs, another other key focus, are more advanced. The University of Utah has been assisting Kairos with enrolment for these trials.
“There are alot of drugs for cancer that work very effectively, the only problem is that they stop being effective after about six months to a year,” CEO John Yu said in a recent interview with The Big Biz Show. “Just like how people can become resistant to antibiotics.”
Kairos is also advancing therapeutics for breast cancer, autoimmune disease and glioblastoma (brain cancer). None of its products have made it to market yet.
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Government optimism propels Kairos
In addition to the DoD, the National Institutes of Health has been another significant research and development funding contributor. They have provided at least US$4.5 million to date.
Interim efficacy and safety data from the company’s ongoing trials will be released later this year. Yu says Kairos has enough cash on hand to fund activities for the remainder of 2025 and into 2026.
The cancer drug development expert went public in September. It was founded in 2013.
The EGFR lung cancer therapeutics market is currently worth approximately US$14 billion, Kairos has highlighted.
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