For more than six years, Molecular Templates has been developing cancer-fighting medicines in its lab in the Texas Life-sciences Collaboration Center in southern Georgetown.

In 2015 the company began Phase 1 human trials for MT-3724, a drug fighting non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which will test the safety and identify the appropriate dosage for the drug, which targets cancer cells, said Jason Kim, Molecular Templates chief financial officer and president.

“Our hope is the clinical trial will be a success,” Kim said. “We are making good progress.”

The study could take up to 24 months and MT-3724 is being tested in a limited number of patients at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston as well as the Perlmutter Cancer Center at New York University Langone Medical Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, he said.

Kim said if Phase 1 is successful, MT-3724 would move into Phase 2 trials that will see if the drug works in a larger number of patients.

MT-3724 is an immunotoxin therapy called engineered toxin bodies, or ETBs, and is used in chemotherapy- resistant aggressive cancers, Kim said.

The drug trial will also be a proof of concept of the company’s ETB therapy concept, he said, which would help other drugs in the company’s pipeline.

Molecular Templates is also developing ETBs for a wide variety of cancer types, including multiple myeloma, melanoma and HER2 breast cancer, he said.

“We hope in the next 12-16 months to move into human trials [with some of these ETBs],” Kim said.

Once in Phase 2, Kim said the drugs would be near the commercial stage of development.

Molecular Templates was founded in 2009 by Eric Poma, the company’s CEO and chief scientific officer. The company moved into the TLCC in Georgetown in June 2009.

At the time the company had three employees. Since joining TLCC the company, which has its office and wet lab space in the center, has moved into different locations in the center up to six times and expanded each time, Kim said. The company now has 19 employees.

Kim said the company has benefited by being a part of the center’s cluster of life-science companies.

“We’ve benefited from the training and academic involvement [at TLCC],” Kim said. “The talent and people infrastructure here is continuing to grow.”

Molecular Templates also has interns working for the company through grants awarded to TLCC and partnerships between the center and area colleges and universities, including Austin Community College, he said.

Kim said as the company continues to grow, he and other company officials hope to remain in Georgetown.

“There is available space for us to expand,” he said. “And we hope to continue our relationship with the city [of Georgetown].”