Actuate Therapeutics, Inc.

The company is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing therapies for high-impact, difficult-to-treat cancers. It achieves this through the inhibition of glycogen synthase kinase-3 ("GSK-3"). The company's primary product in development is elraglusib, an ATP-competitive small molecule designed to enter cancer cells and block the function of the enzyme glycogen synthase kinase-3 beta ("GSK-3β"). This enzyme is a master regulator of complex biological signaling cascades, including those mediated by oncogenes, which contribute to tumor cell survival, growth, migration, and invasion. The company believes that blocking GSK-3β signaling ultimately leads to the death of cancer cells and the regulation of anti-tumor immunity. There are no approved high-affinity inhibitors of GSK-3β, and elraglusib is considered one of the most advanced GSK-3β inhibitors in clinical development. Elraglusib was previously known as 9-ING-41 but received the elraglusib International Nonproprietary Names ("INN") and United States Adopted Names ("USAN") generic name in 2021. The company has exclusively licensed elraglusib, which is a proprietary and patent-protected GSK-3 inhibitor developed through a collaboration between The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois-Chicago ("UIC") and Northwestern University ("NU"). Elraglusib is believed to have broad therapeutic potential, with evidence of preclinical and clinical activity observed in various cancer types, including pancreatic, metastatic melanoma, lung, colon, breast, renal, and ovarian cancer, leukemias and lymphomas, as well as pediatric cancers such as Ewing sarcoma, neuroblastoma, and pediatric leukemias.