Resources for Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

FDA clears local company's possible cancer treatment for human testing

blog.mlive.com

A local biopharmaceutical company has been cleared by the federal government to begin testing a new cancer treatment on humans. ProNAi Therapeutics Inc., which formed in 2004 in the wake of Pfizer Inc. downsizing, has spent the past four years developing a unique treatment that uses a piece of naturally occurring genetic material to kill cancer cells, said Robert Forgey, president and chief operating officer of the Kalamazoo-based company.

Inside the Southwest Michigan Innovation Center on Western Michigan University's Parkview Campus.Former Pfizer Inc. employees Robert Forgey, now chief operating officer of ProNAi, and Neal Goodwin, now chief scientific officer of the company.The technology, which is essentially a piece of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, will be taken through Phase I clinical trials that determine the maximum dose a human can take, he said. After that, trials begin to test the efficacy of the drug as a cancer cure.

The company, which is housed in the Southwest Michigan Innovation Center at Western Michigan University's Business Technology and Research Park, is working on several treatments based on DNA material, Forgey said.

View the Resource

Share or bookmarklet this web page at: