Many cancers and a number of other complex and multifactorial diseases activate multiple molecular pathways, interacting with each other and enabling disease progression. We envision modulating these using not one drug, but the mixtures of biologically active molecules found together in the extracts of medicinal plants. Until recent these were only available as nutraceuticals due to problems in maintain quality and demonstrating efficacy. We plan to utilize the FDA’s new botanical drug regulatory path for developing the extract of a single type of plant into a prescription cancer drug. This plant extract benefits from a history of human use. This will be augmented by our discovery of a way to further enhance the ability of the extract to kill cancer cells, which will distinguish our product from other botanical cancer drugs.

In addition, Phythera is also pursuing more traditional approaches of seeking new efficacious small molecules in rare anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory botanicals, and modulating their properties to impact untreatable diseases such as cancer and inflammation.