COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) - A former Texas A&M University chemist received a letter in the mail that surprised him. It was addressed to him and came all the way from Japan. As Ralph Zingaro opened the letter and began reading, he said he realized receiving it was no mistake.
A compound that Zingaro helped create at a Texas A&M lab half a century ago, is being used to cure a specific kind of cancer through clinical trials in Japan. “My arsenic attached to the glutathione had passed all of the clinical testings and would be released soon as a cancer-curing agent for a particular kind of cancer. It’s called T-Cell Lymphoma,” said Zingaro.
...According to a press release from Solasia, they named the compound Darinaparsin. The release says, “Darinaparsin is a novel mitochondrial targeting drug (organic arsenic compound) that has been developed for the treatment of various hematological cancers and solid cancers. This study was conducted as a multinational, multicentre, single-arm, open-label, non-randomized study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of darinaparsin monotherapy in relapsed or refractory patients with PTCL in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.”
To quote a favorite musical, "What is a legacy? / It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see." Glad to see Dr. Zingaro got to see this particular sprout.
Looks like licensed to them by Ziopharm https://ir.ziopharm.com/news-releases/news-release-details/ziopharm-and-solasia-pharma-announce-license-and-collaboration who ran a couple of studies with it but seem to have dropped it.
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