UF Department of Radiation Oncology clinical associate professor Kathryn E. Hitchcock, MD, PhD, Carlos Colon-Ortiz, a master’s student in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, and a senior biomedical engineering design team have secured a provisional patent for a groundbreaking device that addresses the challenges of total skin electron beam therapy.

“Total skin electron beam therapy has a unique ability to deliver radiation to the skin’s surface, penetrating only a half-inch into the body,” Dr. Hitchcock said. “This makes it ideal for mycosis fungoides, a type of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma characterized by widespread, painful, and itchy lesions.”

“This is an important milestone in the development of DT2216, our lead APTaD™ compound. The FDA’s decision to grant orphan drug designation underscores our belief that DT2216 could be a promising therapeutic for T-cell lymphoma patients” said Dr. David Genecov, Dialectic’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “There is a critical unmet need for people diagnosed with this rare cancer, in which current approved therapies have relatively low response rates”.

Normal T-cells require BCL-XL expression to survive thymic selection during their development. After thymic selection BCL-XL normal T-cells no longer express BCL-XL. However, many T-cell lymphomas re-express BCL-XL as a mechanism of their neoplastic transformation and permits their continued survival as a malignancy. Studies have demonstrated the importance of BCL-XL in T-cell lymphoma survival. Dialectic has shown that DT2216 is an effective treatment for T-cell lymphoma in preclinical studies.