We are developing innovative treatments for triple-negative breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, colorectal cancer, prostate cancer, and esophageal adenocarcinoma.

The glob­al can­cer research com­mu­ni­ty has iden­ti­fied nuclear import of acti­vat­ed onco­pro­teins in trans­formed can­cer cells as a crit­i­cal step of onco­ge­n­e­sis. Three nuclear import adap­tor pro­teins (NIAPs), importins alpha 1 (Imp α1; KPNA2), alpha 3 (Imp α3; KPNA4) and alpha 4 (Imp α4; KPNA3), medi­ate onco­genic sig­nal­ing path­ways in breast, pan­cre­at­ic, esophageal, prostate, and col­orec­tal can­cers.

KaMo­Zo Bio­log­ics, LLC is work­ing to devel­op high­ly effec­tive inhibitors of onco­genic sig­nal­ing path­ways. Uti­liz­ing advanced in sil­i­co tech­niques, we iden­ti­fied 1,095 sequences as poten­tial inhibitors of nuclear import of onco­pro­teins. After test­ing 45 ran­dom­ly select­ed sequences, 18 were found to inter­act with at least one mem­ber of the NIAP fam­i­ly and 9 sequences dis­played high bind­ing affin­i­ty to Imp α1, Imp α3, and/or Imp α4. These 9 sequences are high­ly promis­ing intra­cel­lu­lar can­cer ther­a­peu­tics.

These sequences will be test­ed in cell-based in vit­ro mod­els of triple-neg­a­tive breast can­cer, pan­cre­at­ic can­cer, col­orec­tal can­cer, prostate can­cer, and esophageal can­cer to deter­mine the best candidate(s) as ther­a­peu­tics for neo­plas­tic con­di­tions.