Cancer cell dormancy is a major and currently unaddressed mechanism of cancer survival and resistance. Until recently, the research efforts have been focused on combating the inherently resistant cancer cells and the acquired resistance, which develops over time after exposure to chemotherapeutics (1-3). Cellular dormancy is a resting or “sleeping” state, denoted as the G0 state of the cell cycle. While being dormant,

a cell is in a reversible low metabolic state and both transcription and translation processes are delayed and making these cells resistant to not only chemotherapeutics and targeted therapies, but also to recently

developed immunotherapies (4). Felicitex is developing new therapies that are specific to cancer cells by depriving them of dormancy state for their survival niche. Our therapies target cancer cells with three therapeutically beneficial outcomes: first, kill dormant cancer cells and thereby eliminate their ability to develop resistant phenotype; second, decrease their metastatic potential; and third, eliminate cancer recurrence. 

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1."Tumor Cell Dormancy: Threat or Opportunity in the Fight against Cancer" Cancers, 11, 1207, 2019.

2."Targeting dormant tumor cells to prevent cancer recurrence" The FEBS J., 288, 6286-6303, 2021.

3 "Targeting Cancer Cell Dormancy" Trends in Pharm. Sciences, 40(2), 128-141, 2019.

4. "Quiescent cancer cells resist T cell attack by forming an immunosuppressive niche" Cell, 185, 1-15, 2022.