Here is the AP article. I feel sorry for anyone who is holding a short position over night. Remember last time it gapped to 80. The fact that the NCI managed to replicate shows that these compounds are indeed volatile and difficult to handle but with the proper care, it can be done. No reason to believe that results with both drugs cannot be replicated over time and the problems with production overcome. Folkman is vindicated. After all, if the US government can do it, how hard can it be?
Of course the efficacy in humans remains to be seen, but they do provide new hope and that is good.
>>Anti-Cancer Drug Enters New Phase
AP Online, Thursday, February 11, 1999 at 17:43
By DANIEL Q. HANEY AP Medical Editor
BOSTON (AP) - Government scientists have finally managed to duplicate a Harvard doctor's success with an experimental cancer treatment that wipes out tumors in mice, and they plan to begin human testing by the fall.
The closely watched developments involve a natural protein called endostatin. It and a sister protein called angiostatin both work - at least in mice - by blocking tumors' ability to sprout new blood vessels.
This makes cancer fall dormant or disappear altogether in lab animals. But no one knows if the same thing will happen in people.
The two proteins have been the subject of a roller coaster of speculation ever since an enthusiastic front-page story in The New York Times last May on Dr. Judah Folkman and his experiments. But doubts grew last fall when it was reported that scientists from the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Md., had not been able to reproduce Folkman's results.
This week, an NCI team said it had at last duplicated Folkman's work. The breakthrough using endostatin came only when the NCI scientists conducted the experiments at Folkman's laboratory at Children's Hospital in Boston.
On Thursday, another team of NCI researchers said it has begun designing endostatin studies in humans. The NCI wants to test the drug for safety in perhaps 10 to 30 patients with tumors of the breast, kidney, skin or other parts of the body.
''We are excited about this,'' said Dr. James Pluda, an NCI senior drug investigator. ''If all goes well, we hope to begin by the third quarter of this year and earlier, if possible.''
Pluda said it will take about six months to design the study before it can be submitted to the Food and Drug Administration for approval.
Endostatin and angiostatin are being developed by EntreMed Inc., a small biotech company in Rockville, Md., whose stock price has risen and plunged with each bit of news about the drugs.
On Thursday, it said it is scaling up production of endostatin and will have enough for the preliminary human testing proposed by the NCI.
In recent months, NCI scientists in Frederick attempted without success to duplicate Folkman's work using endostatin shipped to them by his lab.
The researchers assumed that technical problems, including possible trouble transporting the fragile protein, messed up their experiments. They traveled to Folkman's lab, where last month they finally succeeded in using the protein to shrink mouse tumors.
In a statement Thursday, the hospital hinted that the problem might have involved the proper way to inject mice with endostatin.
Next, Children's scientists will go to Frederick to help the NCI duplicate the experiments there.
At least one other scientific team has independently published a report of similar success with endostatin, and the hospital said several others are nearing publication.
EntreMed is developing endostatin alone. It had a joint venture with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. to make angiostatin, but Bristol-Myers late Tuesday announced that it is pulling out because of difficulty producing reliable quantities of the protein.
EntreMed's shares lost half their value on Wednesday, but bounced back on Thursday. Shares of EntreMed rose $12.81 1/4, or by 99.5 percent, to $25.68 3/4 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading.
''The timing was pretty good for EntreMed,'' said Carl Gordon, an analyst with OrbiMed Advisors. Despite Thursday's hoopla among investors, he stressed that destroying cancer cells in people is usually much more difficult than defeating cancer in rodents.
The NCI scientists' success in duplicating Folkman's work was first reported by The Boston Globe on Thursday.
EntreMed spokeswoman Mary P. Sundeen said the company is confident it will be able to develop angiostatin alone. She said Entremed hopes to begin human studies of the protein late this year.<<
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