TRACT Pharmaceuticals Information

Our scientific founders have made a significant discovery which allows us to isolate individual epithelial stem cells from tissue biopsies and replicate them 100’s of millions of times so that we can grow them in numbers not previously attainable. This is especially significant in cancer where stem cells have been recognized as potentially causative to treatment resistant and recurrent forms of disease. Our scientific founders have also discovered that in inflammatory conditions such as COPD these disease causing stem cells are sentinel in normal disease free tissue but become aberrantly activated and the resulting overpopulation of them triggers the immune response that has been traditionally identified as the hallmark of disease. Our novel and proprietary drug discovery platform stemECHO provides an unprecedented opportunity for identification of novel therapies to treat intractable forms of disease in cancer, metaplasia and inflammation caused by the disease causing stem cells. Utilizing high throughput screening we have already identified potential treatments for esophageal adenocarcinoma, lung, ovarian and gastric cancer. We are also identifying and evaluating potential treatments for inflammatory conditions such as COPD, Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, Cystic Fibrosis and Crohn’s Disease. The discovery platform will allow us to further explore and more specifically define the mechanisms of action that target these disease causing stem cells. We believe this could result in the development of new classes of drugs or gene therapies with enhanced efficacy against sub-optimally or non treatable forms of cancer and inflammation. We have conducted pre-clinical,proof of concept data in esophageal, lung, ovarian and gastric cancer. Our preclinical work in esophageal and gastric cancer has been replicated by investigators at MD Anderson. Much of our work has also been published in top tier journals such as Cell and Nature.