Galera Therapeutics is developing therapeutic agents to combat and prevent radiation damage to normal tissue during the radiation treatment of cancer. In preclincal models, the lead agents are not only very effective as radiation protection agents, but they are also active as anti-tumor agents. 

Nearly 1.5 million new cases of cancer are diagnosed annually in the USA. Approximately half of these cases will involve radiation treatment. Therefore, there exists a critical need for ways to make the radiation treatment more effective while minimizing the side effects. Galera’s agents block radiation damage via a fundamental and critical cellular pathway and provide synergistic and additive treatment to provide more effectiveness and less toxicity in treating the cancer.

Galera’s lead candidates have been safely administered to hundreds of human subjects at doses that have been shown to be effective in protecting from radiation damage in preclinical studies.

Galera is projecting to initiate human clinical trials in cancer indications in 2011. Galera is focusing its initial clinical development efforts on preventing the oral mucositis (OM) that arises from radiation treatment of head and neck cancer, a subset of this huge market.