Clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company Iterion Therapeutics announced on Tuesday that the first patient has been dosed in a clinical study evaluating tegavivint, a first-in-class inhibitor of the Wnt/beta-catenin pathway, in combination with gemcitabine, for patients with relapsed or refractory osteosarcoma.

Osteosarcoma is the most common malignant bone tumour in children and adolescents, and outcomes following relapse remain poor.

The trial is sponsored by Emory University, conducted at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and supported by funding from the Peach Bowl LegACy Fund.

Tegavivint is a small-molecule inhibitor of TBL1, a transcriptional co-factor required for oncogenic beta-catenin signalling. According to Iterion, it has already demonstrated favourable tolerability, pharmacodynamic activity, and encouraging monotherapy clinical responses in company-sponsored clinical trials in hepatocellular carcinoma and desmoid tumours, two diseases driven by aberrant Wnt/beta-catenin signalling.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted both Orphan Drug Designation and Pediatric Rare Disease Designation for tegavivint for the treatment of osteosarcoma.