curatiocme.com
In addition to the clinical trials that I mentioned above that are either here or soon to begin, there are clinical trials of novel agents already reported at this meeting. Of those to be highlighted, there are clinical trials of an Hsp90 inhibitor called KOS953 from the Kosan company in California. Studies in our laboratory several years ago showed that each heat shock protein 90 was a wonderful target in myeloma because it conferred growth survival and drug resistance advantage in the myeloma cell. Kosan has a molecule that's an Hsp90 inhibitor that's in clinical trial. That trial is led by Paul Richardson at our center, and he will report at ASH on 22 patients who have been treated in a dose escalation fashion with this new drug. And 63% of the patients either had stable disease or responded to this new drug, and they had relapsed or relapsed and refractory myeloma, which more plainly means they had received in many cases, for example, bortezomib and yet still were able to respond to this new agent. So this is very exciting. There are many companies now that have also Hsp90 inhibitors. Another Hsp90 inhibitor that we already have in the clinic is called IPI504 from the Infinity company in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and it's again earlier on in the study, but we're very hopeful and excited about this potential as well. I will mention quickly here that this drug, although it's exciting by itself, that is the KOS953, our preclinical studies suggest that combining it with proteasome inhibitor will, again, be much more efficacious in the preclinical models. If you add heat shock protein 90 inhibitor, KOS953, to bortezomib, you can overcome bortezomib resistance. Excitingly this observation has already translated to the clinic and Dr. Asher Chanan-Khan from Roswell Park will present an oral report on this trial. Again, it's a multicenter trial involving our center as well. And in patients so far treated, 18 patients, 75% of
patients either had stable disease or responded to the combination of KOS953 plus bortezomib. And in this study there are many patients who are bortezomib resistant. So it is actually validating what was shown in the preclinical studies that if you add this drug to bortezomib, you can overcome bortezomib resistance. |
