Our Product
The Adverse Impact of Breast Cancer
Breast cancer is one of the most frequent cancers and leading causes of death for women in the U.S. with an estimated:
287,850
New diagnoses of invasive breast cancer in 2022
43,250
Deaths caused by invasive breast cancer in 2022
* Globally, there are over 2.3 million new cases of breast cancer diagnosed with 685,000 deaths expected in 2022. July 14, 2022 Breast Cancer Facts and Statistics
Treatment Resistance
The vast majority (75%) of breast cancer is estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) and unfortunately, about 50% of these patients become resistant to current therapies. There are no effective treatment approaches available for these therapeutic resistant breast cancer and patients often rely on highly toxic chemo- and radiation therapies. Newer therapies targeting different kinase pathways have been approved for a limited patient subpopulation in recent years, however, these drugs again show frequent side effects and soon “stop working” with the disease progresses in nearly all cases. Thus, the development of new and improved targeted treatments to overcome resistance and minimize side effects is urgently needed.
What is MED1?
MED1 has recently been established as a key tissue-specific ER transcriptional coactivator in mediating anti-estrogen treatment resistance of breast cancer. Importantly, MED1 is overexpressed in about 50% of all breast cancers and co-amplifies with another key breast cancer gene HER2 in approximately 20% of human breast tumors. Significantly, clinical evidence indicates that MED1 expression highly correlates with poor disease-free survival of breast cancer patients.
Our Innovative Solution
RNA Nanotherapeutics’ innovative solution to therapeutic-resistant breast cancer is to target MED1 by RNA nanotechnology. We have developed the novel pRNA-HER2apt-siMED1 nanoparticle harboring two MED1 siRNAs for therapy and a HER2 aptamer ligand for tumor-targeting using a 3-WJ pRNA backbone. These highly stable multifunctional RNA nanoparticles have been successfully tested in both in vitro and in vivo preclinical models and exhibited highly desirable tumor-specific targeting and treatment efficacy with fewer treatments and no apparent toxicity.
The breast cancer treatment market was valued at $20.2 Billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $32.6 Billion by 2026, and our product could benefit 30% or more of the breast cancer patient population. Significantly, the success of our product will provide not only novel therapies to overcome the current major obstacles in breast cancer treatment but also a platform approach to target other pathways and treat other cancers and diseases.
