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Abstract
Ecopia is finding novel anticancer therapies from microorganisms, one of the most prolific sources of drugs. Our current focus is to move our lead compound, ECO-4601, through the different stages of its Phase I clinical trial. ECO-4601 is a novel small molecule that crosses the blood brain barrier and is effective in significantly inhibiting growth of primary brain tumor and other types of cancers in xenograft models. Just like well-known chemotherapies such as doxorubicin and mitomycin C, ECO-4601 comes from a microorganism that lives in common soil. However, unlike these drugs that were discovered many decades ago, ECO-4601 represents a new chemical class that is the fruit of a very unique drug discovery platform called the DECIPHER(R) technology, from which many analogs can be synthesized.