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Beta Pharma to manufacture Sunshine's targeted cancer drug

Canada's Sunshine BioPharma has tabbed CMO Beta Pharma to manufacture and help develop its candidate breast cancer treatment, Adva-27a.

The companies didn't disclose financial terms, but the deal will task Beta Pharma with producing an initial batch of the drug and providing synthesis parameters for future scale-up and large-scale manufacturing of the treatment.

Adva-27a is Sunshine's leading anti-cancer treatment, and the drug has thus far proven effective in killing multi-drug-resistant breast cancer cells and small-cell lung cancer cells. The treatment targets the gene Top2, which is associated with aggressive forms of cancer and has no effective drugs on the market to treat it, according to Sunshine. The company has partnered with State University of New York at Binghamton and McGill University's Jewish General Hospital in Montreal to conduct further trials of the drug.

Sunshine expects to have the first batch of the drug available by the end of the month, and the company is looking forward to getting Beta Pharma's synthesis parameters, its CEO said. "We are delighted to be working with Beta Pharma Canada with excellent in-house synthesis capability and can amass additional resources through its corporate affiliations," Sunshine CEO Steve Slilaty said in a statement.

- read Sunshine's release