Kura Oncology
Mastering Precision Medicine to Defend Cancer

The treatment for cancer has come a long way in the past several years. Till the recent past, surgery was considered to be more precise and less damaging. Meanwhile, radiation therapy can be tailored to a patient’s tumor type, size, and location, and can cure several early-stage cancers. Today, most practitioners use a combination of radiation and surgery along with chemotherapy or other treatments, to increase survival. However, to completely eliminate cancer as a deadly disease, much of the hope and funding lies in cancer drug discovery, the pace of which has been accelerating rapidly over time. In contrast to a one-size-fits-all approach, precision medicine has become an emerging method for disease treatment as well as its prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, lifestyle, and environment for each person. This unique approach enables physicians and researchers to predict more accurately which treatment and prevention strategies work best for a particular disease. Though precision medicine is a relatively new concept, it has been a part of healthcare for years. The genomics revolution is transforming how cancer is treated. Researchers understand that a patient’s response to treatment depends in part on cancer’s genetic makeup. It offers the potential for innovative treatments that are safer and more effective for patients with certain cancers. At Kura Oncology, the team is committed to realizing the promise of precision medicines for the treatment of cancer. The company’s ultimate goal is to help patients with cancer lead better and longer lives.

The experts at Kura Oncology are advancing a pipeline of precision medicines for the treatment of solid tumors and blood cancers. The company’s advanced small-molecule drugs have the capability to target signaling pathways and other drivers of cancer to improve outcomes by identifying the patients who are most likely to benefit from treatment.

Kura Oncology’s flagship drug candidate is tipifarnib, a farnesyltransferase inhibitor, which is in multiple Phase 2 clinical trials. The company’s list of medicines also includes KO-947, an ERK inhibitor, and KO-539, a main-MLL inhibitor, currently in preclinical development. Kura Oncology’s team uses a precision medicine approach to discover and develop innovative therapies designed to inhibit abnormally functioning cellular pathways that fuel cancer growth. “We, at Kura Oncology, are working hard to pair these product candidates with molecular diagnostics for identifying patients with tumors that are most likely to respond to treatment,” adds Troy Wilson, Ph.D., J.D., CEO and President, Kura Oncology.

The First Step to Precision Medicine

The company harnesses the potential of targeted therapeutics that are designed to hone in on certain features of cancer cells to destroy them selectively.

The experts at Kura Oncology are advancing a pipeline of precision medicines for the treatment of solid tumors and blood cancers

The targeted therapies block cancer from growing and spreading by interfering with specific genes or proteins necessary for tumor growth. Unlike traditional treatments such as surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, this approach works much effective. Most of the standard chemotherapy drugs generally work by killing the cells that grow and divide quickly. As the cancer cells multiply quickly, it allows these drugs to work very often. However, it also creates chances of severe side effects as chemotherapy drugs can affect other cells in the body with similar characteristics.

Today, scientists are increasingly identifying alterations in cancer cells that make them different from normal cells. Specific mutations in key genes might enable it to grow and divide quickly or allow the cell to stop working in its actual way. This increased understanding of such cells and its working has led to the development of drugs that “target” these differences, and treating diseases with these drugs are called targeted therapy. Kura Oncology’s highly advanced targeted therapeutics can block or turn off chemical signals that enable the cancer cell to grow and divide, stop making new blood vessels to feed the cancer cells and change proteins within the cancer cells to kill it. It can also trigger the immune system or carry toxins to the cancer cells to kill them while sparing normal cells.

The company’s experts are completely focused on developing innovative therapeutics that potently and selectively reduce the development of cancer cells. Besides, they are working to pair the drug candidates with genetic data and other diagnostic information for identifying the most suitable patients. This unique approach enables the company to deliver more developed medicines that can result in an improved clinical benefit in patient populations with potentially fewer side effects. This not only allows higher dosing but also enables better anti-cancer activity.

The Role of Biomarkers

Tipifarnib is an oral, investigational drug being evaluated in trials. The drug has the ability to block the activity of an enzyme called farnesyltransferase. It includes a key cell signaling process implicated in various cancer processes, including survival, growth, and proliferation of tumor cells.

Tipifarnib is an oral, investigational drug that the company has been evaluating. The drug has been studied in around 5000 oncology patients and was observed to have a manageable side effect profile. Most of the clinical and preclinical data suggest that in specific selected patient populations, the drug has been potential in providing clinical benefits to cancer patients with much-limited treatment options. Meanwhile, the experts at Kura use a precision medicine approach to develop the tipifarnib for patient treatment.

They use the medicine on patients with selected types of cancer including conducting the clinical that include HRAS Mutant Squamous Head and Neck Cancer, Peripheral T-Cell Lymphomas, Myelodysplastic Syndromes, and Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia.

Experts at Kura Oncology believes that patients who exhibit specific biomarkers may also be more likely to receive higher and better clinical benefits from particular types of targeted cancer therapy. The team then conducts preclinical and translational research to understand the working processes of drug candidates to kill tumor cells and determine the biomarkers for specific patients.

After identifying the biomarkers, the team works with clinical, laboratory and molecular pathology partners to integrate testing into our investigational clinical trials.

The Ultimate Medicine

Kura Oncology recently reported an updated preliminary result from a Phase 2 clinical trial of its lead product candidate, tipifarnib, in squamous cell carcinomas with HRAS mutations. The company enrolled 17 patients with HRAS mutant head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC). With Kura Oncology’s advanced medicines, 11 evaluable patients reported tumor size reductions with five confirmed partial responses, including three patients with durable responses lasting more than 17 months. Another patient showed a confirmed partial response after the data cutoff. Four patients had stable disease, including two patients who experienced prolonged disease stabilization lasting more than six months.

"The ultimate goal of Kura Oncology is to identify indications with the potential for single-agent activity, which may enable accelerated development"

The company also reported that only a single patient experienced progressive disease as best response. Patients in the Phase 2 trial of tipifarnib in HRAS mutant HNSCC had a median of two prior lines of therapy. Based on the observations, Kura Oncology plans to introduce a minimum tumor HRAS mutant allele frequency, anticipated to be no lower than 20 percent. The company also intends to implement these modifications in its ongoing Phase 2 trial and anticipates being able to provide additional data in the coming year.

Building a Shield against Cancer

Since opening its doors, experts at Kura Oncology are striving to create a wall against cancer by harnessing the potential of advanced precision medicines. The company is conducting a Phase 2 clinical trial to evaluate the safety and activity of its flagship product tipifarnib in eligible patients with MDS that have no known curative treatment. In addition, they are currently conducting a Phase 1 clinical trial of KO-947 in patients with locally advanced unresectable or metastatic, refractory non-hematological malignancies. “We are also conducting preclinical development activities for KO-539 with a goal to file an IND and advance this drug candidate into Phase 1 human clinical testing. The ultimate goal of Kura Oncology is to identify indications with the potential for single-agent activity, which may enable accelerated development,” concludes Wilson.