ZK Cancer Research
A Family Company

The Problem

In the present clinical practice, treatment of cancer cachexia starts too late. To make such treatment effective it must start as soon as the tumor recognized.

At later stages of tumor development, about 70% of patients will unintentionally lose body weight and muscle mass (as shown in the picture), the process being termed “cancer cachexia”. Once cachexia develops, it makes any treatment practically inefficient. In fact, many cancer patients (~30%) die directly due to cachexia and not the tumor itself. In today’s medical practice, treatment of cachexia is insufficient partly because (a) when it is recognized it is too late to effectively deal with it, and (b) presently no single medication is available to ensure satisfactory reduction of weight and muscle loss due to its multifactorial (some of them unknown) nature.

ZK Cancer Research (ZKCR) is a family-owned biotechnological company which has started to test, so far with very positive results, the effects of a series of heterocyclic compounds (ZKC compounds) on the early treatment of cancer cachexia in suitable mouse models. The goal is to eventually use the most effective and least toxic compound as an affordable add-on drug for the early treatment of cancer patients, resulting in better quality of life and increased survival, as animal experiments strongly suggest.