Targeted Cancer Dyes Get One Step Closer To Market

A large gift to an Indiana biotech company will help targeted fluorescent dyes advance, the technology helps make cancer surgeries more successful. The imaging compound armed with fluorescent dyes, given to patients before surgery, illuminates cancer cells and help surgeons find and remove lesions that might have been missed.

On Target Laboratories CEO Martin Low says many skilled surgeons have used the product.

“As experienced as they are they still have found additional lesions that they said were clinically relevant and would benefit the patient by removal,” says Low.

On Target Laboratories is based out of Purdue Research Park received $40 million in financing led by Johnson and Johnson Innovation.  Low says the gift will help facilitate remaining clinical trials and FDA approval.

“If everything goes well the intention is that we will be able to offer this dye to patients that have ovarian cancer and patients that have lung cancer who are eligible for surgery,” says Low.

The group leads the development of such dyes and would likely be the first to commercialize. The money will also go towards advancing the technology for other types of cancer.

“We’ll be able to do the same type of things that we’ve done with ovarian and lung with this new molecule in prostate,” says Low.

The dyes could be available as early as 2020.