technology overview

Breakthroughs in the fields of genomics and molecular biology have revealed that cancer cells become established because they are able to override some key decision-making processes within the cell. This decision-making concerns such fundamental matters as whether to survive or to die, and whether to multiply or not. By overriding the survival/death decision-making process, cancer cells live forever; by overriding the growth/non-growth decision-making process, cancer cells grow in an unregulated manner.

Up until now, the primary focus of anti-cancer drug development has been on dealing with the consequences of this process; that is, trying to block the cancer cell's ability to multiply or to survive. Our technology platform offers the possibility of drugs that have the potential to restore the normal decision-making processes.

In the late 1990s, scientists at Novogen Limited discovered a group of plant compounds that are involved in regulating the same primitive decision-making processes such as survival/death and growth/non-growth in plant cells. These compounds are known as isoflavones.

More than 400 new chemical structures have been created based on the central design of these naturally-occurring plant isoflavones. We believe that each of these synthetic compounds interacts with specific enzyme targets, resulting in inhibition of tumor cell metabolism – a function critical for the survival/death of cancer cells.