Gachon University Gil Medical Center research team has begun phase 2a clinical trials of cancer drugs by winning approval for the investigational new drug from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.

The candidate for anticancer therapy OMT-110 is a metabolic cancer drug developed by a research team led by Professor Kim Hwan-mook. It converts the metabolic system of cancer cells equal to that of healthy cells and naturally induces death.

OMT-110 has proved to have anticancer effects in various solid cancers such as pancreatic cancer, refractory breast cancer, lung cancer, brain cancer, and liver cancer in preclinical studies.

The evaluation conducted with a positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) scan after applying OMT-110 to 15 participants showed no severe side effects or toxicity in healthy cells.

A stable metabolic reaction was observed in nine subjects and a clear tendency of partial metabolic response (PMR) for a decrease in glucose transport in four subjects during metabolic regulation, proving to have an anticancer effect.

“The findings were published at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2020 as the first phase clinical trials showed excellent safety and no toxicity to normal cells,” Gachon University Gil Medical Center Professor Baek Jeong-heum said.

The study results were published in ASCO 2020 with the title “An open-label, single-arm, phase I study to assess the safety, efficacy, and biomarker effects of OMT-110 in patients with refractory colorectal cancer.”