Novitero Ltd.

About us

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 is an computational drug design and development company that proactively combats cancer by anticipating and disarming its potential escape mechanisms.

The goal of Novitero is to enable future effective precision cancer treatment, aiming at combating cancer by previewing its mutational activities and by overcoming its resistance to therapies. We employ our computational technologies to predict the mutational fingerprints implicated in drug resistance to various therapeutic targets, and we design, validate and outlicense new drugs that bypass these mutations. Our war strategy on cancer consists on being few steps ahead of cancer by predicting and smartly bypassing the potential future mutations that the cancer may adopt to resist therapies.

Novitero designs broad-spectrum, novel, patented drugs based on its computational drug discovery technology platform. Drugs that act on specific targets in human tumors (such as Gleevec™, Irresa™ or Zelboraf™) have now been clinically validated as effective cancer therapies (“Targeted therapies”). However, the rapid acquisition of resistance to such treatments, and the consequent treatment failure, cancer progression and relapse significantly limit their utility and remains the key challenges to the clinical management of advanced cancers. There is therefore a rising need to be able to further develop medicaments that will be effective on mutated target proteins and thereby bypass resistance. Novitero overcomes resistance through the computer-based design and development of patented, improved and structurally adapted drugs that bypass multiple mutations of several targets.

While second- and third-generation mutation-specific drugs are being developed for two major targets in non small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). Second generation BCR-Abl1 inhibitors (dasatinib, nilotinib) were followed by a more potent and broader spectrum third generation inhibitors (Bosutinib, Ponatinib) that are effective against the T315I mutation. However, these drugs are not effective against multiple mutations (MP), arising from multiple clones, nor against compound mutations (CM), arising from a single clone. The common use of sequential TKI and Ponatinib has outlined the importance of multiple and compound mutations in the development of subsequent resistance to TKI therapy. It was recently demonstrated that the majority of Ph+ leukemia patients treated with sequential TKI therapy have two-component compound mutations (76%) as compared to 21% triple and 3% quadruple mutations. Although it is anticipated that new compound mutations in several targets will become evident in the future, drugs capable to address multiple and compound mutations have not yet been designed. Novitero addresses specifically this need by its customized drug design platform technology.

The company has been founded by Dr. Itzchak Angel, CEO, an accomplished executive in the pharmaceutical industry, with over 30 years experience in guiding strategic drug- and business-development in both large and emerging companies, and brought several drugs to market. Dr. Angel was previously Head of Pharmacology at Sanofi (Formerly Synthelabo, Paris, France) and brought several drugs to market (Ambien, Xatral, Migpriv and Mizollen). He has formerly been VP R&D at Proteologics Ltd and at D-Pharm Biopharmaceuticals (Rehovot, Israel) where he developed several compounds into advanced clinical development.  Dr. Angel has a confirmed experience and network in business development and pharmaceutical deals. He is co-inventor and co-author of over 100 patents and publications.