Is this good???? Is this only in Phase I?
<Just returned from a closed meeting at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, Folkman told BioMedNet News that that results from the first clinical trials are "very promising" and "quite impressive." Thus far, 180 patients have enrolled in trials and 1800 are waiting to enroll. After 8 months of wearing a portable pump, some patients began to have regression, and 10 have switched to subcutaneous delivery, as with insulin, Folkman says.
There are "many reasons why you couldn't get [endostatin] to work in the beginning," he said. "But it's turned out to be a surprisingly good drug."
In a soon-to-be published abstract, clinical investigators will report exactly that, says Joseph Paul Eder, who ran the trials at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard cancer center. "Nobody has had what we'd call a major response yet," he said. But of 28 patients, 3 have shown "minor responses" where the tumor has reduced in size, while tumor size has stabilized in some others.
"Even if it's not by a whole lot, it's still important because you've done something that's changed the behavior of the tumor," Eder explained. The investigators believe there is a biological correlate between endostatin and tumor size, but suspect it will prove most effective in combination therapy. Any response "already puts [endostatin] in the top 10% of drugs," Eder added, because Phase I responses are uncommon. Taxol showed poor results in Phase I. >
DAK |
