CytRx Corp. () is a
biopharmaceutical research and development
Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in Europe as research and technological development (RTD), is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products, and improving existi ...
oncology company based in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
.
The CytRx oncology pipeline includes clinical trials involving their lead drug aldoxorubicin. Aldoxorubicin (formerly INNO-206) is a modified form of
doxorubicin, the popular
anthracycline chemotherapeutic agent known as "red death".
Anthracyclines are a class of drugs that are among the most commonly used agents in the treatment of cancer. Doxorubicin, the first anthracycline to gain approval, has demonstrated efficacy in a wide variety of cancers including breast cancer, lung cancer, sarcomas, and lymphomas. However, doxorubicin is associated with side effects such as myelosuppression, gastrointestinal disorders, mucositis, stomatitis, cumulative cardiotoxicity and extravasation.
General
CytRx plans to expand its pipeline of oncology candidates at its laboratory facilities in Freiburg, Germany, based on novel linker technologies that can be utilized with multiple chemotherapeutic agents and may allow for greater concentration of drug at tumor sites.
The corporate website is http://www.cytrx.com/aldoxorubicin
Steven Arthur Kriegsman is the President and CEO.
Aldoxorubicin
Aldoxorubicin (formerly INNO-206) is a tumor-targeted doxorubicin conjugate. Specifically, it is the (6-Maleimidocaproyl)
hydrazone
Hydrazones are a class of organic compounds with the structure . They are related to ketones and aldehydes by the replacement of the oxygen =O with the = functional group. They are formed usually by the action of hydrazine on ketones or aldehydes. ...
of doxorubicin. Essentially, this chemical name describes doxorubicin (DOXO) attached to an acid sensitive linker (EMCH).
Completed preclinical and clinical trials (see below) indicate that this novel agent has attributes that improve on native doxorubicin including reduction of adverse events, improvement in efficacy and the ability to reach the tumor more quickly. CytRx has outlicensed aldoxorubicin to NantCell as of 2017.
Stock promotion
In 2014 CytRx was involved in a
stock promotion
In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a company ...
scheme, paying DreamTeamGroup to write at least 13 articles that appeared on
Seeking Alpha
Seeking Alpha is a crowd-sourced content service for financial markets. Articles and research covers a broad range of stocks, asset classes, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and investment strategies. Unlike other equity research platforms, insight ...
,
Forbes.com
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
,
Motley Fool
The Motley Fool is a private financial and investing advice company based in Alexandria, Virginia. It was founded in July 1993 by co-chairmen and brothers David Gardner and Tom Gardner, and Erik Rydholm, who has since left the company. The compa ...
, and Cheat Sheet. The articles carried no
conflict of interest
A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates to situations i ...
disclosure, and were reviewed and edited by CytRx management. The stock price doubled following the articles. The articles and author profile pages (including pseudonyms) were removed after investigation by
CNNMoney
CNN Business (formerly CNN Money) is a financial news and information website, operated by CNN. The website was originally formed as a joint venture between CNN.com and Time Warner's ''Fortune'' and ''Money'' magazines. Since the spin-off of Time ...
. A class action lawsuit has been filed against CytRx.
The events leading to CytRx lawsuits were revealed by a Seeking Alpha author named Richard Pearson who was shorting the CytRx company stock and the "short attack" was revealed by another Seeking Alpha author PhD. who wrote about the science of aldoxorubicin and revealed the motives behind Richard Pearson's article to short the company's stock. The second Seeking Alpha article pointed to a financial motive for the negative article and that the author Richard Pearson took a short position in CytRx company stock 3 days before he published his article about CytRx.
See also
*
Galena Biopharma
Galena Biopharma (originally RXi Pharmaceuticals) was a publicly traded pharmaceutical company based in San Ramon, California. The company was founded in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 2011, it moved to Oregon, and in 2015 moved to San Ramon, Califor ...
, a former subsidiary of CytRx
References
External links
Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cytrx
Companies listed on the Nasdaq
Pharmaceutical companies of the United States
Companies based in Los Angeles
Health care companies based in California