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Tuesday May 23, 9:35 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
Celsion Exclusively Licenses From Memorial Sloan-Kettering a Heat Activated Targeted Gene Therapy Technique for the Treatment of Cancer
COLUMBIA, Md.--(BW HealthWire)--May 23, 2000--Celsion Corporation (OTC BB:CELN - news) announced today that it has signed an exclusive world-wide agreement with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center for the commercial rights to a heat activated gene therapy technology for treating cancers.
The proposed treatment involves the use of Celsion's focused heat equipment, with a heat sensitive biological modifier developed at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and is intended to improve the performance of conventional radiation and chemotherapy. The treatment suppresses the cancerous cell's ability to repair DNA damage caused by radiation or a variety of chemotherapeutic drugs. Accordingly, a tumor treated with this combined technology potentially can be eradicated (killed) using significantly lower doses of radiation or chemotherapy.
Celsion's focused heat equipment will be used to raise the temperature in the tumor in order to trigger the biological modifier. The modifier then reduces the production of a specific protein in the tumor, which would normally repair DNA damage after radiation or chemotherapy. Celsion initially plans to focus on the development of the modifier as a product for the radiation oncology market. The Company is sponsoring additional research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering to develop this technology. After completion of this additional research, Celsion plans to enter into clinical studies to demonstrate safety and efficacy before the treatment can be commercialized.
``The exciting aspect of this technology is its potentially universal application to all chemo and radiation therapies,'' stated Dr. Augustine Y. Cheung, Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer of Celsion.
``I am hopeful that the combined use of Celsion's focused heat to activate the action of our biological modifier, with focused radiation therapy, may eventually lead to the clinical optimization of radiotherapy with minimal side affects,'' said Dr. Gloria C. Li, Head of Radiation and Hyperthermia Biology Laboratory at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. Li continued, ``I am pleased that after two decades of research, Dr. Cheung and I finally determined how to combine innovations in microwave system engineering with targeted gene therapy to come up with a potentially effective cancer treatment approach, which may be significantly less toxic to normal tissues surrounding the tumor mass.''
About Celsion: Celsion Corporation is a research and development company dedicated to commercializing medical treatment systems for cancer and other diseases using focused heat technology delivered by patented microwave technology. Celsion has research, license or commercialization agreements with leading institutions such as Duke University Medical Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harbor UCLA Medical Center, the University of California at San Francisco, Montefiore Medical Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and Duke University. |
