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Australian Company Gets $10 million For Developing Skin Cancer Gel

by Medindia Content Team on Dec 30 2005 8:07 PM

The skin cancer gel developer Peplin has said that it would speed up the process of human testing of its fast-action cancer cream since it was able to get an amount of $10 million from institutional investors for this purpose.

The company based in Queensland, Australia is developing the PEP005 compound as a treatment for actinic keratosis a pre-cancerous condition that leads to skin cancer. “You'll take a prescription to your pharmacist, you’ll get it filled with this neat little product, you’ll rub it on for a few days and you’ll see resolution of your new lesions,” said Peplin chief executive Michael Aldridge. He added that the gel would soon be available as a take-home prescription. Peplin said that it would begin the second phase of testing out the gel in clinical trials in United States and Australia in the New Year. “We think we have identified the right dose, the right concentration, well just focus in on exploring either side of that some shorter therapies, some longer therapies to see what sort of impact that has,” Mr Aldridge commented.

The company was able to raise $10 million after a trial involving 60 patients showed a 71 percent clearing of the sun spots that are usually a precursor to full blown skin cancer. "The major opportunity that we have is that our drug works following just a couple of days of treatment," Mr Aldridge said. "It’s very difficult to encourage people to put a cream on daily for weeks and months, they just don’t comply."


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