The National Cancer Center (NCC) established Incurix Co., Ltd (Incurix), an in-house startup specializing in the development of anti-cancer drugs that directly inhibit transcription factors, on November 30, 2018. Incurix is a science-based pharmaceutical company for new drug development. The company was established to commercialize the research on transcription factors proceeded by Dr. Kyung-Chae Jeong, Incurix CEO and Senior Director at NCC, over the last 20 years. Dr. Jeong’s team has investigated clinical translational research at NCC, based on tumor biology of transcription factors (TF) and the interactions of direct inhibitors, which has laid the foundation for the development of new drugs targeting transcription factors.

While TFs are the ultimate target in anti-cancer drug development, drugs indirectly targeting them have been mainly developed so far, as TFs are known to be undruggable or difficult to target. Meanwhile, the mechanism of TF inhibition is regarded as the most ideal when TF protein itself is directly targeted, because direct TF inhibitors can bypass most of the side effects of cancer therapeutics. However, such an approach has not succeeded yet. Incurix’s technology enables direct inhibitors to separate TF protein from its consensus DNA, hence reducing the production of oncogenic proteins. 

The Incurix research team has set myc as the first target for full-scale development of the lead program. It is expecting to conduct research on new targets to expand the pipeline.