Here's what WSJ had to say today about ENMD:
The Wall Street Journal -- May 5, 1998
Technology & Health:
Tiny EntreMed's Share Price
Rockets
On Reports Tied to Its Tumor
Drugs
----
By Robert Langreth
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
Shares of tiny EntreMed Inc. more than quadrupled on news reports that,
in about 12 to 18 months, the company may begin human tests of two
experimental drugs that have destroyed tumors in laboratory mice.
In trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market, shares of the Rockville, Md.,
biotechnology company rose $39.75 to $51.8125 in an explosion of heavy
trading. More than 20 million shares, nearly twice as many as the company
has outstanding, changed hands as EntreMed's market capitalization
ballooned to $650 million from $149 million by the close of trading.
The surge follows a report in the New York Times that EntreMed hoped to
begin clinical trials "within a year" for the company's two cancer agents. In
research published and presented publicly last year, scientists showed that
the experimental medicines, called angiostatin and endostatin, can eradicate
tumors in laboratory mice by blocking the blood vessels the tumors need to
sustain themselves.
But many cancer researchers said the two drugs were very far from being
proven useful in humans. The scientists familiar with the drugs cautioned
that simply because the therapy worked extremely well in mice doesn't
necessarily mean it will work in humans. Researchers have eliminated
cancerous tumors in laboratory animals with various experimental drugs or
approaches, yet none of them have yet advanced to successful use in
humans.
"I wish I had a nickel for every research report in which a new therapy
cured mice of tumors," said David Nance, president and chief executive
officer of Introgen Therapeutics Inc., a closely held biotech company in
Austin, Texas, that has produced similar results with its experimental
therapy based on repairing defective genes.
EntreMed officials played down speculation that the drugs might cure
cancer someday. "We don't use the C-word here," said EntreMed Chief
Financial Officer Nelson Campbell. "We won't know until we are in human
trials whether we have a drug."
Because the two drugs are fragments of natural proteins produced by the
body, they are relatively difficult to manufacture in the pure form needed for
human tests. EntreMed and its partners, including Bristol-Myers Squibb
Co., are still working out the process needed to manufacture large
quantities of the proteins that would be required to undertake clinical trials.
Blocking tumors' blood vessels, called antiangiogenesis, is an approach to
cancer that has gained favor in recent years. Several other biotech and
pharmaceutical companies are developing drugs based on similar
approaches and some are already in early phases of human testing.
Genentech Inc., for example, recently completed human-safety testing of a
monoclonal antibody against the blood-vessel stimulating protein VEGF,
and has begun efficacy tests in cancer patients. Other companies including
Magainin Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Sugen Inc. are in human testing of other
drugs that attack blood-vessels in tumors.
Many of the EntreMed animal tests were first published in the British
scientific journal Nature six months ago and presented at scientific
conferences over the past several months. The drugs are proteins that were
discovered by Judah Folkman, a renowned cancer researcher at Harvard
University and Children's Hospital in Boston who has devoted much of the
past 30 years of his career to developing drugs that attack the tumors'
blood vessels.
In the Nature article, published November 27, 1997, Dr. Folkman and his
colleagues reported that repeated injections of the protein fragment,
endostatin, eliminated large lung and skin tumors in laboratory mice, and
held the remaining small number of cancer cells indefinitely in a dormant
state. "The results are unprecedented and could herald a new era of cancer
treatment. But that era could be years away," wrote Robert Kerbel of the
University of Toronto in a commentary accompanying the Nature paper.
But he noted that the drugs could be very expensive to produce, and would
have to be used chronically, raising the possibility of longterm side effects.
Company insiders hold 18% of EntreMed's shares. John Holaday,
chairman and chief executive officer, owns 9% of the company. Dr.
Folkman wasn't listed as a major shareholder in the latest Securities and
Exchange Commission filing.
EntreMed is collaborating with BristolMyers to develop angiostatin, while it
is working with the National Cancer Institute to develop endostatin.
Journal Link: EntreMed's chief executive discusses the company's new
drugs in a video report in The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition at
wsj.com |
