ENMD--FORM CBS MARKETWATCH
>>Anti-cancer results duplicated
Government test big boost for EntreMed
Last Update: 2:18 PM ET Feb 11, 1999 NewsWatch
BOSTON (AP) -- Government scientists have finally been able to reproduce a scientist's highly publicized results for an anti-cancer drug and are now seeking to begin the first human tests, The Boston Globe reported Thursday.
The tiny biotech company EntreMed (ENMD) saw its shares soar on the news.
The breakthrough using the drug endostatin came only when National Cancer Institute scientists conducted the experiment in the Children's Hospital laboratory of researcher Dr. Judah Folkman, who discovered it and found that it reduced tumors in mice.
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Last fall, NCI scientists said they could not match Folkman's promising test results using a small quantity of the drug Folkman sent them. Folkman attributed the failure to the drug's sensitivity to handling, storage and the way it's administered. The institute, in Frederick, Md., then sent researchers to Folkman's lab in November and December.
"This substantiates the idea that these are technical issues" that led to the failure at the NCI laboratory, Dr. Robert Wittes, deputy director of the institute, told the Globe. "Now we will move to facilities in Frederick and try to reproduce the results down here," he said.
The NCI also sent notices this week to medical centers around the country, inviting proposals for human tests to determine if endostatin is safe, the newspaper said.
Wittes could not predict when tests on humans would start.
Folkman gained worldwide attention last spring when The New York Times reported in a page one story on his findings that endostatin and a related drug, angiostatin, shrunk tumors in rats by cutting off their blood supply.
Children's Hospital licensed both drugs to EntreMed for further development into commercial products. EntreMed sublicensed angiostatin to the Bristol-Myers Squibb pharmaceutical company, while EntreMed and the cancer institute concentrated on endostatin.
On Tuesday, Bristol-Myers said it was withdrawing from the partnership to develop angiostatin, saying the project had not produced a drug that was consistently effective.
EntreMed said it would press ahead with tests on angiostatin, but investors sliced the company's value in half Wednesday. Today, shares of EntreMed rebounded $2.62 1/2, or by 20.4 percent, to $15.50 in morning trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. <<
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