Drug Runners

Sep 27, 2024

They traverse miles and miles of highways and byways, and cross hazardous physical barriers, risking it all for no pay to deliver significant quantities of a high-potency drug.

The drug in question is not cannabis, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine or fentanyl, but lead EpicentRx therapy, RRx-001 (nibrozetone). Red blood cells, neutrophils, and macrophages are the couriers or “mules” that RRx-001 co-opts to smuggle it across heavily fortified disease borders.

On administration, RRx-001 almost immediately binds to these cells, which specifically transport it to sites of disease and inflammation like cancer, endometriosis, myocardial infarction, severe oral mucositis, neurodegeneration and other toxicities of the central nervous system (CNS). This is the reason for the excellent tolerability of RRx-001 which in close to 400 patients has never been associated with a related serious adverse event (SAE) or a dose limiting toxicity (DLT), because its activity occurs only at these sites of disease and inflammation and pretty much nowhere else.

Currently RRx-001 is in 3 clinical trials: a Phase 2b for severe oral mucositis (SOM), a Phase 3 for small cell lung cancer (SCLC), and a Phase 2 for endometriosis. These RRx-001-loaded red blood cells, neutrophils, and macrophages are potentially at risk of interception from the immune system, but, so far, at least, from anecdotal front-line reports that clinical sites have given us, they have successfully managed to smuggle RRx-001, and RRx-001 metabolites across the disease border and to offload them there with promising effect.