AmpliMed® Corporation is a University of Arizona-based, Arizona Board of Regents-approved pharmaceutical company, located in Tucson, Arizona. It was founded in 1989 with the support of The University of Arizona Technology Development Corporation to discover, develop and commercialize novel compounds for the treatment of cancer. The company was formed by senior faculty members at the Arizona Cancer Center (AZCC) in Tucson, Arizona. The company's anticancer drugs exhibit novel mechanisms of action designed to overcome some of the limitations, such as myelosuppression (suppression of the blood counts), multi-drug resistance (MDR is treatment-induced resistance to many cancer drugs) and other toxicities associated with some current cancer therapy. The company's lead drug, Amplimexon® (imexon, inj.) is effective at killing cancer cells as a result of a unique mechanism of action that results in the buildup of toxic substances inside cancer cells exposed to the drug, ultimately resulting in a process known as apoptosis, or controlled cell death.
