Crowdfunding Cancer Drug Development: Ability Pharma Hits Gold

Spain's Ability Pharmaceuticals is embracing the emerging space of biotech crowdfunding to help finance mid-stage trials of its first-in-class compound initially being developed for endometrial and squamous lung cancers.

The compound in question, ABTL0812, causes cell death by autophagy through the overexpression of TRIB3, an endogenous Akt regulator. Ability claims that it is a first-in-class fully differentiated oral targeted anticancer compound inhibiting the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway without being a direct kinase inhibitor