Sept. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Cancer researchers have begun testing an experimental drug in men with metastatic prostate cancer who have failed hormone therapy. There is currently no cure for prostate cancer that has spread beyond the prostate into surrounding tissue and bone. The drug, CV787, kills targeted cancer cells, leaving normal, or non-cancerous, cells unharmed.
Scientists at Calydon, Inc., a Silicon Valley-based biotechnology company, have engineered CV787 as an oncolytic (cancer cell killing) virus that preferentially replicates in, and kills, human prostate cancer cells 10,000 times more frequently than normal cells. This specificity is significantly better than chemotherapy, which only kills two-to-six cancer cells for each normal cell incidentally killed, or radiation therapy, which kills all rapidly dividing cells indiscriminately.
The experimental prostate cancer therapeutic, CV787 IV, is being evaluated in patients with end-stage, metastatic prostate cancer at three medical centers: University of California at San Francisco, Johns Hopkins Oncology Center in Baltimore, and University of Wisconsin at Madison. Investigators will be enrolling up to 48 patients for the Phase I/II multi-center, open label, dose-finding study. The primary objectives of this trial are to determine the safety, tolerability, and PSA efficacy of CV787 administered intravenously to patients with end-stage prostate cancer.
``This Phase I/II trial follows on the heels of our successful clinical trial with CN706, our first prostate cancer therapeutic, which we tested at Johns Hopkins in 20 patients with recurrent, organ-confined disease,'' said David B. Karpf, MD, Vice President of Clinical and Regulatory Affairs at Calydon. ``Our preliminary results were very encouraging, and we are pleased to initiate this trial to address metastatic disease that kills 33,000 men a year in the U.S.''
Patients interested in this or in other Calydon prostate cancer clinical studies may review the Calydon web site at: www.calydon.com for eligibility and study design of these clinical trials.
Calydon Inc., a privately held company, is engaged in the discovery, development and commercialization of novel virus-based therapeutics for cancer. With its ARCA(TM) technology, the company is able to create tumor-specific viruses that replicate in and kill targeted cancer cells, leaving non-cancer cells unharmed. The company is in Phase I/II development for its prostate cancer therapeutics, CV787 and CN706, at multiple sites in the United States. (For further information, please visit www.calydon.com.) ... |
