Trial at Seoul National University Hospital to probe 'pseudo-resistance' mechanism
Penitreum Bio will launch a Phase 1 clinical trial of its anticancer drug candidate Penitreum for prostate cancer on June 5.
Prof. Jeong Chang-wook of the urology department at Seoul National University Hospital will serve as principal investigator. The trial aims to evaluate the compound's safety in humans and, for the first time, confirm its mechanism for normalizing the tumor microenvironment.
Parent company Hyundai Bioscience commissioned the trial. Unlike conventional anticancer drugs that directly attack cancer cells through cytotoxic action, Penitreum works through a non-cytotoxic mechanism — reversing the pathological structures that have hardened like cement around cancer cells and restoring them to a healthy state.
As a result, even the highest-dose group in the trial will receive only 15 percent of the no-observed-adverse-effect level confirmed in preclinical studies.
"We expect this to be a turning point in fundamentally overcoming the pseudo-resistance problem in anticancer drugs — a challenge humanity has failed to solve for the past 80 years," Hyundai Bio CEO Jin Geun-woo said.
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