Shuttle Pharmaceuticals Holdings has entered a sponsored research agreement with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to develop Shuttle’s ligand to the prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) as a theranostic molecule.
Under the agreement, UCSF researchers, led by principal investigator Robert Flavell, MD, PhD, will develop radiosynthetic methods for producing the F-18 FPA-ACUPA probe, investigate cellular binding properties of F-18 FPA-ACUPA in prostate cancer cell lines, and investigate the diagnostic potential of the probe across various prostate cancer phenotypes. Shuttle Pharma has an exclusive license to the PSMA-B intellectual property and has filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Shuttle said that PSMA is a valuable target for diagnosis and therapy of prostate cancer. It added that preclinical evaluations have begun to explore the company’s PSMA-B ligand as a potential prostate cancer sensitizer in combination with proton therapy, as well as a PET diagnostic reagent and as a targeted prostate cancer therapeutic.