Novogen believes that the technology that it is developing offers the hope of finally being able to reverse the disease processes underlying the most common degenerative diseases in our community and do so without the side effects that accompany the use of currently available drugs.
The Novogen technology is based on an important, but previously little recognised, natural phenomenon - the ability of plant flavonoids to regulate signal transduction processes in human cells. This understanding has lead to Novogen chemists synthesising novel flavonoids which have advanced efficacy but retain the safety of the plant analogues providing lead candidates for drug development. The technology has three key foundations:
- the identification of the major cell signalling processes that malfunction in degenerative diseases;
- the identification of those flavonoids that have a beneficial effect on those particular signalling processes;
- understanding how to manipulate the structure of those flavonoids in such a way as to increase their biological potency without compromising their high level of safety.
The technology is explained in more detail below.
Degenerative disease and signal transduction regulation
The simplest definition of a degenerative disease is one where the normal control mechanisms in the body malfunction to the point where there is progressive deterioration in the function of the tissue. Cancer, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, Type 1 diabetes, osteoporosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease are some of the better-known examples of degenerative disease.
Increasingly, it has become evident that at the heart of this deterioration of function is a malfunction in the way that cells communicate with each other. In the case of cancer, this miscommunication means that cancer cells divide when they should not and migrate to other parts of the body where they should not.
This realisation has led to an entirely new approach to the development of drugs for these diseases based on being able to restore the normal communications both within cells and between cells. This new class of drugs is known as 'signal transduction regulators' (Appendix 2), which simply means that the drug endeavours to correct the way the communication signals are processed by the cell, either by 'switching off' an over-active signal or 'switching on' an under-active signal.
Recent developments in the areas of the human genome and computerised drug design have brought considerable focus to this area. These new technologies mean that drugs can be designed to either 'switch off' a signalling system that is behaving abnormally high or 'switch on' a signalling system that is behaving abnormally weakly. This has raised the prospect of a new generation of treatments for some of mankind's most serious diseases.
Despite the promise, this 'designer' approach to the design of drugs for degenerative diseases by and large has failed because most degenerative diseases are complex matters, involving malfunctions of a large number of different individual signalling processes. The challenge of developing a wide range of drugs to treat multiple malfunctions for the one disease has proven to be a major hurdle.
The Novogen approach
Novogen is bringing a fresh and innovative approach to this problem. The approach is based on a family of naturally-occurring plant compounds known as isoflavonoids that regulate fundamentally important signalling processes within all plant and animal cells. By studying the relationship between the isoflavonoid chemical structure and its ability to affect a wide range of functions within the cell, Novogen has been able to design novel isoflavonoids with the potential to be used as drugs that have specific and potent actions:
- that regulate signalling processes that are fundamental to human degenerative disease; and
- that each act on a broad range of signalling processes, meaning that one drug has the potential to successfully treat a single disease.
