
John Friend
Physician-executive and CEO of Kazia Therapeutics (NASDAQ: KZIA), an oncology-focused biotech developing treatments for glioblastoma and other hard-to-treat cancers.
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APPEARANCES
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Sep 30, 2026
How Cancer Uses an “Invisibility Cloak” - And How Kazia Therapeutics Is Trying to Remove It
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14:09Chris LeidliHOST
So what is it about Pax's tolerability profile that is different or unique that you can share with us?

John FriendGUEST
Yeah, so I think the first thing is this drug was specifically designed to cross the blood-brain barrier.

John FriendGUEST
The researcher who discovered it was a Genentech scientist who had a family member who passed away of a glioblastoma.

John FriendGUEST
And he thought, gosh, PI3K drugs, because there are PI3K drugs that have been approved mostly in breast cancer or hematology indications, but they do not cross the blood-brain barrier.

John FriendGUEST
So he went about and actually took time to discover a drug, design a drug to be able to cross the blood-brain barrier.

John FriendGUEST
It just so happened that the drug was able to both hit the PI3K as well as mTOR.
8 MINS LATER
Base to Base biotech podcast 61: Making tumours visible, and taking on tough challenges
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John FriendGUEST
Jim, about two and a half years ago, I was approached by a researcher at QIMR Berghofer, Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia, who is a UK-trained ex-Sanofi epigenetic scientist, uh, Professor Sudha Rao, who had this concept that our lead asset and our mechanism of action could have additional effects outside of the standard sort of traditional and conventional kinase inhibitors.

John FriendGUEST
And where the focus was that there may be some sort of downstream effect from a cancer biology, being able to reprogram these dormant cancer stem cells, these circulating tumor cells, such that they can be recognized by our own innate immune system, and T cells, and natural killer cells, such that our own immune system can then work as well as other potential, uh, standard of care immunotherapies or chemotherapies.

John FriendGUEST
We went about with this collaboration, as I mentioned, two and a half years ago, to focus on breast cancer.

John FriendGUEST
She had a number of liquid biopsy samples from, uh, breast cancer patients across all of Australia.
10 MINS LATER
