A team of researchers is fighting ovarian cancer, one submicron-sized drug particle at a time.

CritiTech, working out of a tiny laboratory in a nondescript building in west Lawrence, is getting ready to start testing its own reformulation of a cancer drug that – so far, at least – carries all the effectiveness of the base cancer drug but without its side effects.

The reformulation, called Nanotax, uses an innovative process to shrink the size of the drug’s particles. And that means that a toxic solvent normally used to carry cancer-fighting medicine into the body can be exchanged with a much less disturbing delivery vehicle: saline solution.

That’s right, water.

“It’s a slam dunk,” said Matt McClorey, chief financial officer for CritiTech. “We can actually increase the dosages of the drug and eliminate the toxicity profile. If it works in humans the way it worked in animals, this could be a huge, huge success.”

But adding water to a cancer drug – one that produces $1 billion a year in sales – is no simple matter. There are more directions that need to be followed.

CritiTech staff members, from left, are Carolyn Shelton, contracts manager; Jahna Howell, director of laboratory operations; Mike Campbell, information technology and marketing manager; and Fenghui Niu, research engineer. The company's lab at 4950 Research Parkway soon will be expanded to help accommodate a growing number of contracts with large pharmaceutical companies.

While its Investigational New Drug application has been filed with the Food and Drug Administration, CritiTech still needs to work through an imposing run of regulatory and business-related tasks before bringing its product to market.

Discussions with FDA officials in Washington have CritiTech leaders hoping to embark on human clinical trials of Nanotax later this year. The company already has arrangements in place with Aptuit in Kansas City, Mo., to manufacture small batches of Nanotax and with physicians at KU Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., to test the drug with patients.

If the reformulated drug performs as hoped, Nanotax then would be ticketed for phase 2 clinical trials, a process to test the effectiveness of the drug. The trials could cost more than $10 million and usher in a partnership with a major pharmaceutical company, perhaps even one of those that already has a relationship with the company spun out of Kansas University’s Higuchi Biosciences Center.

CritiTech officials are optimistic that Nanotax might even be effective fighting other abdominal cancers.

“It’s extremely promising,” said Carolyn Shelton, contracts manager.

The company is growing. Just last month it added three pharmaceutical companies to its list of clients and has plans for at least doubling its lab space and adding two more employees.

Jahna Howell, director of laboratory operations, agrees. She cites studies that show that only 44 percent of patients with ovarian cancer survive for five years, compared with nearly 90 percent for patients with breast cancer.

With 26,000 new cases of ovarian cancer in the country each year, she knows there are plenty of people whose lives one day could be improved, lengthened or even saved through the use of Nanotax.

“It’s exciting,” she said, during a break from work in the lab. “I feel like this is something that could really (push) forward cancer research (and treatment).”