Evgen Pharma plc and Dr Marjolein Geurts, neuro-oncologist at the Erasmus University Medical Center, announce the formal start of their collaborative project in glioblastoma, supported with a grant awarded by the KWF Dutch Cancer Society. The grant start conditions and documentation have been satisfied and the project formally commenced on 1 October. The studies, which are funded by a grant towards total project costs of approx.

EUR 1.1 million awarded by the KWF Dutch cancer Society, will investigate the use of SFX-01 in pre-clinical glioblastoma models, followed by a clinical Investigator Sponsored Study (ISS), aiming to establish the presence of the drug in human brain tumours and engagement with relevant molecular targets in excised tumour tissue. The Erasmus University Medical Center team has also appointed a dedicated, grant funded PhD student, who starts in early November. The project is being carried out in the laboratory and clinic of Dr Marjolein GeURts, neuro-oncologists at Erasmus Medical Center, Cancer Institute, Rotterdam, in the Netherlands and will run for three years, generating data continuously throughout the period.

Standard of care for glioblastoma patients is surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, however it is still a disease of significant high unmet need where patient survival rates from diagnosis are between 1 and 3 years and new effective treatment options are sorely needed.