GC Wellbeing has finished injection of its novel drug pipeline GCWB204 in European clinical phase 2 trial, the company said Tuesday.

By the first half of 2021, GC Wellbeing will learn the scope of the drug’s effects and engage in negotiations for licensing it out, it added.

GCBWB204 is a novel drug candidate for cancer cachexia, which is a nutritional imbalance in cancer patients that causes muscular atrophy and metabolic disorders. This medical condition can be caused by cancer itself, or by the toxicity of anticancer treatments.

More than half of cancer patients have cancer cachexia, and around 20 percent die from it. Worldwide, there is no single pharmaceutical agent approved for the treatment of cancer cachexia -- which gaping hole is tentatively filled by appetite stimulants.

GC Wellbeing is currently running clinical phase 2 trials in Germany, Ukraine and Georgia targeting a total of 110 patients who have non-small-cell lung cancer and digestive cancer.

Since cancer cachexia is a multifactorial disease, meaning it has more than one cause, a multimodal approach is needed to counter it, said GC Wellbeing.

GCBWB204 has multimodal functions of suppressing muscle disintegration and inflammatory cytokines, while triggering muscle growth. 

By Lim Jeong-yeo (kaylalim@heraldcorp.com)