Public Funding for Apeikon Therapeutics Ltd

Life-saving cancer treatment comes with many side effects that impact patients' quality of life, often for significant periods of time. Patients also suffer clinical signs such as liver or kidney toxicity, reduced immune function that increases risk of infection and even internal bleeding. This exerts a heavy cost on the National Health Service, related to increased patient hospitalisation to monitor and manage these adverse effects. Apeikon Therapeutics is a UK based academic startup company developing a novel technology to increase effectivenss of cancer treatments while minimising their side effects. Conventional chemotherapy is administered systemically and distributes all over the body causing adverse effects. Instead, Apeikon's technology administers the chemotherapeutics in lipid envelopes (named liposomes) that have a tracker and are sensitive to triggered drug release using low-intensity ultrasound. The liposome tracker is detected by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) when the patient receives the treatment. This allows for the location of tumours and the precise focusing of ultrasound beams onto them. The ultrasound beam provides enough energy to break open the liposomes and release the drugs instantly and only within the tumour. The result is a 10-fold increase in tumour drug concentration and/or a 10-fold decrease in the required administered dose. The precisely targetted delivery means that other parts of the body experience a low drug exposure which should reduce adverse side effects. As the ultrasound causes virtually instant release of the drug load, and because this is imagable in real-time, the process may also be repeated within a short period (hours) to provide another burst of drug release that should further increase efficacy. Apeikon's technology has been tested in proof-of-concept studies in pre-clinical models of cancer, demonstrating the potential of the technique. This project aims to characterise and develop the technology further (in models of brain cancer), with the aim of getting it ready for clinical trials. The project is particularly timely with regard to the Covid pandemic, and the increase in cancer diagnosed cases due to lack of screening during the last two years. This is expected to produce an increase in late stage cancer and cancer burden in the coming years.