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To: schrodingers_cat who wrote (103660)	5/22/2000 12:45:00 AM
From: schrodingers_cat	Respond to of 164684

Follow-up for biotech fans... Friday I posted...Big cancer meeting this weekend. I read in a news article in Science (sorry no link) that anti vegf antibodies, used as an angiogenesis inhibitor, had promising results in some mice. Genentech announcing results of study in humans this weekend, no idea if news is good... Sunday's news... Genentech Antibody in Colon Cancer -Report NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Genentech Inc. (NYSE:DNA - news) said Sunday its experimental new therapy aimed at starving out tumors seemed to work well against patients with colon cancer that had spread. The company said it was too early to say if the drug, a monoclonal antibody targeted against vascular endothelial cell growth factor (rhuMAb-VEGF), helped patients survive longer. But in a report to the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), Genentech and researchers at several cancer clinics said the drug seemed to have better response rates than standard chemotherapy and seemed to slow progression of cancer. Monoclonal antibodies are relatively new cancer therapies based on a genetically engineered protein that homes in on a specific target. In this case the target is VEGF, which is naturally used in the body to build blood vessels and which tumors use to build little capillaries to tap into arteries to feed themselves. This process, called angiogenesis, and drugs that interfere with it, called angiogenesis inhibitors, are a hot topic in cancer research. Dr. Emily Bergsland of the University of California San Francisco and colleagues are testing 104 patients previously untreated for advanced colon cancer that has spread. They get either standard chemotherapy, or the chemotherapy plus high or low doses of anti-VEGF antibodies. Bergsland's team got a response, meaning some measurable effect, on the tumors of 40 percent of patients in the low dose and 24 percent of patients in the high-dose group, as compared to 17 percent in the group that got the chemotherapy drugs 5-FU and leucovorin alone. Time to disease progression was 9 months in the low dose and 7 months in the high dose group, compared to 5 months in those who just got the chemotherapy. But 13 patients had blood clots that may have been related to the antibody treatments, although such clots are common in cancer patients. Genentech will report results from a completed Phase II trial in advanced non-small cell lung cancer that has spread and interim Phase II results in breast cancer that has spread on Tuesday.