Ninety percent of cancer deaths are due to metastasis. Still, none of the currently approved therapies focuses on delaying the process of metastasis, only delaying the primary or secondary tumour’s proliferation.
All previous targeted discovery approaches against metastasis have not been successful in clinical trials to date. The complexity of metastasis biology made identifying translatable targets challenging, impeding critical decisions in the discovery screening cascade. Further challenges of being unable to select high-risk, primary tumour patient cohorts for clinical trials decreased the feasibility of success.
Mestastop Solutions focuses on these challenges through the three-pronged approach of Drug Discovery programmes, Drug Repurposing Studies and Clinical Translation. Our diverse multifaceted team of biochemists, cell biology experts and data science specialists ensure that we always deliver robust, reliable and research-validated solutions.
Research solutions uniquely leveraging technology (ReSULT) enable answering the following key questions:
Consequently, Mestastop Solutions focuses on identification and characterisation of target compounds, comprehensive compound profiling and in-vivo pharmacology, which are reinforced by AI-powered companion diagnostics, allowing us to leverage the best cutting-edge technology to offer novel, best-in-class solutions.
The development of molecules to delay metastasis in a first-in-line adjuvant setting would require a high safety margin for chronic treatment options. Therefore, testing the anti-metastatic potential of all drugs approved for non-oncology indications is important, as they have a significantly higher safety margin than approved cancer drugs.
Mestastop Solutions has developed a platform called MetGuard®, which tests approved drugs in the METAssay® panel and then takes the lead in the METVivo® panel, conferring in-vitro to in-vivo translational efficacy. This is followed up with retrospective clinical trial studies and employing the METSCAN® platform to understand the relevance of the identified compounds in promoting survival in patients with a five-year follow-up.
Patient relevance and clinical translation are in the DNA of all the platforms developed by Mestastop Solutions. As the platforms are optimised and trained using patient data, thereby identifying key targets or molecules that can delay metastasis, the probability of failure in clinical trials is significantly lower. The advantage of using clinical samples to finalise the algorithm and the platforms ensures improvement over time as more patient data come in.
Patient primary tumours from clinically non-metastatic samples, irrespective of node status, are purified and cultured in 2D and 3D forms for various cell-based functional phenotypic assays. Mestastop Solutions is also developing high-throughput screening of patient samples in 3D format for identifying the best treatment options to accelerate discovery and clinical decision-making.
All clinical samples are tumour-review board approved and patient-consented along with Institutional Ethics Committee clearance. Following grant of all necessary approvals, the samples undergo detailed analysis, from mechanobiology to metabolic profiling.