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Biotech / Medical : VD's Model Portfolio & Discussion Thread

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To: Andrew H who wrote (1482)	6/28/1997 7:16:00 PM
From: Pseudo Biologist	of 9719

Andrew, regarding Immunex Flt3 ligand results. First, my ex-Immunex contact tells me that you do not pronounce it F-L-T-3 but rather "flat3" - this point alone would make you pass as a big time immunologist anywhere -g- Second, I glanced at the Nature Medicine paper. It cures cancer in mice like so many other "drugs." It has however some interesting points. An old dream of the biotech and drug industries in the treatment of cancer is the notion of using the body's own resources (immune system) to get rid of the cancer cells. To some extent these mechanisms operate in all of us most of the time and their failure is one of many possible causes of cancer developing. You may recall the story of Cetus and interleukin-2 (marketed now as Proleukin by Chiron, and by Ligand in Canada) back in the 80's. Cetus was swallowed by Chiron as the initial promise of interleukin-2 never materialized. It is used now for some very limited cases of renal(?) cancer I believe. Interleukin-2 (IL-2) is a T-cell growth factor and the idea was that it could be used to stimulate the body's own T-cells to fight infections and cancers. The problem is that those excited T-cells would also lead to all sort of inflammation-like problems and the side effect profile was unacceptable. Back to "flat3" ligand, a factor that stimulates dentritic cells (DC). DC's fight tumor cells (and infections) more subtly by presenting antigens (pieces of proteins from infectious agents or cancer cells) to the immune system . The animal data in the Nature Med paper and elsewhere suggests that flat3 ligand may have the tumor-fighting capability of il-2; this is great but il-2 did the same. Now, the second shoe drops: the phase I data in humans suggests that flat3 ligand is safe as it does not have the nasty side-effect profile of il-2: voila you have the ingredients of a super cancer-fighting drug; and an explanation for a 8-point jump in IMNX (the bad news from IDEC on the same day also helped the prospects of IMNX's own drug for RA, Enbrel). flat3 ligand also has some properties useful for "peripheral blood stem cell transplantation" -- I have to look into that later. Phase I/II results are expected in 4Q'97. PB

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