Research on Etira drugs win awards at AACR 2025

Chicago, IL – April 30, 2025:

Presenters of two abstracts with preclinical data on ERX-208 and ERX-315 have won awards at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2025 in Chicago.

Adriana Baker, who presented a poster titled “ERX-315 targets LIPA and potently causes catastrophic endoplasmic reticulum stress in multiple subtypes of hepatocellular cancer” won 2025 AACR-Family of Dan Y. Zhang Scholar-in-Training award, which is awarded to support young investigators who will be presenting meritorious abstracts in the field of liver cancer research at the AACR annual meeting. https://www.aacr.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AM25_SITA_Awardee_List_Web-1.pdfAdriana is a MD PhD candidate working in the laboratory of Etira Founder Dr. Ratna Vadlamudi at UT Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Durga Paneerdoss, who presented a poster titled “Combining LIPA inhibitor ERX-208 with DNA-damaging agents as a novel strategy to enhance ovarian cancer treatment” received an honorable mention from the Margaret Foti Foundation Undergraduate Prizes for Cancer Research. This award is given to the top 10 out of more than 200 undergaduate posters. Durga is a sophomore at UTSA and was also recently named as a Barry Goldwater scholar, one of the nation’s most prestigious honors for undergraduates pursing research careers in natural sciences, mathematics and engineering https://goldwaterscholarship.gov/2025-scholars/

“We are very proud of these extremely dedicated, talented and hardworking students who have established new paradigms for understanding the activity of ERX-208 and ERX-315” said Dr. Vadlamudi. “These abstracts rigorously assess synergy of ERX-208 with FDA-approved drugs, and validate ERX-315, an Etira drug in Phase 1 trial (NCT06533332), for impact in liver cancer.