Armed with a $4.75 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, a German biotech company will relocate to Houston to work on developing a cancer medicine that fights solid tumors.

Eisbach Bio is conducting a clinical trial of its EIS-12656 therapy at Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer Center. In September, the company announced its first patient had undergone EIS-12656 treatment. EIS-12656 works by suppressing cancer-related genome reorganization generated by DNA.

The funding from the cancer institute will support the second phase of the EIS-12656 trial, focusing on homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) tumors.

“HRD occurs when a cell loses its ability to repair double-strand DNA breaks, leading to genomic alterations and instability that can contribute to cancerous tumor growth,” says the institute.

HRD is a biomarker found in most advanced stages of ovarian cancer, according to Medical News Today. DNA constantly undergoes damage and repairs. One of the repair routes is the

homologous recombination repair (HRR) system.

Genetic mutations, specifically those in the BCRA1 and BCRA1 genes, cause an estimated 10 percent of cases of ovarian cancer, says Medical News Today.

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) says the Eisbach Bio funding will bolster the company’s “transformative approach to HRD tumor therapy, positioning Texas as a hub for innovative cancer treatments while expanding clinical options for HRD patients.”

The cancer institute also handed out grants to recruit several researchers to Houston:

• $2 million to recruit Norihiro Goto from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to MD Anderson.
• $2 million to recruit Xufeng Chen from New York University to MD Anderson.
• $2 million to recruit Xiangdong Lv from MD Anderson to the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

In addition, the institute awarded:

• $9,513,569 to Houston-based Marker Therapeutics for a first-phase study to develop T cell-based immunotherapy for treatment of metastatic pancreatic cancer.
• $2,499,990 to Lewis Foxhall of MD Anderson for a colorectal cancer screening program.
• $1,499,997 to Abigail Zamorano of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston for a cervical cancer screening program.
• $1,497,342 to Jennifer Minnix of MD Anderson for a lung cancer screening program in Northeast Texas.
• $449,929 to Roger Zoorob of the Baylor College of Medicine for early prevention of lung cancer.

On November 20, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute granted funding of $89 million to an array of people and organizations involved in cancer prevention and research.