GammaCan - Preclinical Testing

VitiGam has undergone extensive pre-clinical testing. Using both in vitro and animal models to evaluate the activity of potential melanoma drugs our scientists have shown that VitiGam has the following drug-like properties:

VitiGam has been shown to specifically bind to melanoma cell lines. It does so substantially better than GCAN101. This is an important observation since in order for VitiGam to work, the drug is expected to interact (bind) with its target.
VitiGam has been shown to prevent the proliferation (growth in number not size) of melanoma cells in a dose depended manner. Again, VitiGam does so substantially better than GCAN101. One of the key features of cancerous cells includes their ability to proliferate even in the presence of proper checks and balances. For VitiGam to be active it is thus important that it be able to stop this uncontrolled proliferation. Finally, to make a VitiGam into a drug it is important that we show VitiGam’s anti-melanoma activity is dose depended. Indeed, in our experiments we have shown that the more VitiGam we add – the more anti-melanoma activity (inhibition of proliferation) we see.
VitiGam has been shown to prevent the proliferation and/or metastasis of melanoma cells in vivo (mouse models). Once more, it does so substantially better than GCAN101. To show that VitiGam has prospects of being active in more complex systems (other than a Petri-dish) we injected mice with a human melanoma cells and asked what effect on the melanoma VitiGam would have cells in these mice. Without drug, we would expect the melanoma cells to colonize the lungs of these mice (as well as other organs). But when we looked at the lungs of mice that were treated with VitiGam, we discovered a very substantial and statistically significant reduction in the number of tumor foci vis-à-vis mice treated with GCAN101. This supports our in vitro findings and suggests anti-melanoma activity of VitiGam in more complex biological systems.

We are continually generating more data to further our understanding of how VitiGam works and what the key components in VitiGam are that confer its anti-melanoma properties

The image shows lungs from untreated and treated mice in Gammacan's preclinical trials. Many black melanoma metastases are seen in the control group (left), while only a few are visible in the lungs of the treated animal (right).