The National Cancer Center (NCC) said on Tuesday that its anti-cancer drug targeting fatty acid oxidation inhibition, KN510713, was approved to enter clinical trials by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) on Wednesday.

The small molecule fatty acid oxidation inhibitor, KN510713, is an innovative new anticancer drug developed after 12 years of research. It is a breakthrough treatment that significantly reduces the growth of tumor cells by cutting off their energy supply without affecting normal tissues.

After the NCC applied for a patent and transferring the technology to NCC-Bio in 2023, NCC-Bio completed clinical trial preparation and received approval to begin clinical trials from the MFDS.

Accordingly, the clinical team of the NCC will initiate phase 1 clinical trials for the drug to treat pancreatic cancer.

Generally, the Warburg effect states that cancer cells use glucose as their energy source is widely published in studies but Dr. Kim Soo-youl, Chief Researcher of NCC's Cancer Molecular Biology Research Division, refuted this theory, suggesting that fatty acids are instead exclusively used as an energy source. Consequently, KN510713’s mechanism of action is based on this theory which is now regarded as the "Kim effect".

Accordingly, they developed KN510713 as a strategy to inhibit the use of fatty acids and measured the anti-cancer efficacy using the inhibitor, which showed excellent efficacy in human-like animal models. The results were also presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) on April 18, 2023.

"After more than 10 years of research, the therapeutic product we developed will enter clinical trials, enabling us to verify its clinical effectiveness as an anti-cancer treatment beyond existing anti-cancer therapies," said Dr. Kim who led the study.

This is the world's first clinical trial of an anti-cancer drug that inhibits cancer fatty acid oxidative metabolism and, if successful, will set a new paradigm for the development of anti-cancer drugs that inhibit catabolism, Kim added.