비욘드바이오

Blood cancer

Blood cancer is a cancer that originates in the blood, bone marrow, and lymph nodes, and spreads throughout the body. Due to its nature, chemotherapy is the basic treatment method rather than surgery. The 5-year survival rate for blood cancer is about 55% on average, but it varies widely depending on the type of blood cancer, such as 80% for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and 25% for high-risk acute myeloid leukemia (AML). In particular, AML has a high possibility of relapse and has the limitation of a high treatment failure rate due to complications.

Since blood cancer treatment aims to achieve complete remission (CR) by reducing the number of cancer cells rather than slowing the disease progression, the treatment intensity is so high that even young people have difficulty enduring it, and there is a tendency for a lot of toxicity due to anticancer drugs. Therefore, the development of new drugs that increase the treatment effect while reducing toxicity is necessary.

Currently, Venetoclax (VEN) is used as a treatment for blood cancer, but it has been reported that there are limitations to monotherapy due to resistance caused by overexpression of anti-apoptotic proteins (Mcl-1, Bcl-xL, etc.). Although combination therapy with VEN and Hypomethylating agents (HMA) significantly improved prognosis, follow-up treatment after failure of VEN/HMA treatment remains difficult.

BeyondBio’s anti-cancer drug can induce complete remission alone, and it is expected to be an excellent anticancer drug that can show improved anticancer effects when combined with Venetoclax.