Australian biotech Phylogica is focusing on killing cancer "from the inside", which it says is a more effective way of fighting the disease.
The Perth-based company's key objective is to get therapeutic drugs inside cells, where most drug targets are found.
Existing drugs only ever reach a tiny number of targets.
But Phylogica has a library of billions of peptides, from which it says selected peptides can be linked to therapeutic drugs and serve as a key to unlock a cell's powerful outer protection and get inside.
"We're about trying to take this new generation of smart drugs that they (big pharmaceutical firms) have been developing and deliver them much more efficiently inside the cells so they can access their targets," Phylogica chief executive Richard Hopkins says.
For example, Phylogica is targeting MYC, a protein that turns on genes that cause cancer and which is present in more than 50 per cent of all cancers.
Dr Hopkins says the pharmaceutical industry has been trying to develop drugs to fight MYC for 40 years.
Phylogica links its peptide to a drug that is active against MYC.
"We have established potencies or activities against MYC that are unprecedented," Dr Hopkins says.
"We are now embarking on a very aggressive transition from being perceived as a platform technology to applying that to very specific areas of need, specifically focused on cancer, around these high-value targets that no-one else has been able to touch before and which stretch across just about every type of cancer."
Dr Hopkins says Phylogica will move to validate its technology in animal models, starting this year, with a view to moving into a formal pre-clinical program some time in 2016.
Phylogica is seeking partners to help it expedite the path to a clinical trial.
Dr Hopkins says validating the company's technology in animal trials will give Phylogica commercial traction.
"We're sort of pulling together the pieces, and I think this is something we'll articulate to the market over the coming weeks and months," he says.
Phylogica is also taking to interested parties about "internationalising" the company.
Dr Hopkins says the company is finding it hard to gain exposure because it is based in Perth.
Last year Phylogica entered into a collaboration deal with Genentech aimed at developing new antimicrobials to treat bacterial infections, including drug-resistant infections known as superbugs.
Phylogica received an upfront payment of $US500,000 and is eligible to receive discovery, development, and commercialisation milestone payments totalling up to $US142 million.
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