Breast Cancer test on the move again and so is the stock..
Matritech Inc NASDAQ NM: NMPS Last Update: 8:59:00 AM ET May 23, 2001
Study to be conducted at 6 sites; 1000 patients to be tested
NEWTON, Mass., May 23, 2001 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Matritech, Inc.
(NMPS), the cancer diagnosis company, announced today that it has begun
patient recruitment for a multi-center clinical study of its NMP66 blood
test for the early detection of breast cancer.
The clinical study, which will be conducted at 6 medical centers around the
country, will enroll approximately 1,000 patients. It will include about 700
women with lesions which are either visible on mammogram, or palpable, and
who have been recommended by their physicians to have a further diagnostic
procedure such as biopsy. An additional 300 women with normal mammograms
will also be recruited. The trial will investigate the ability of the NMP66
blood test to detect cancer, differentiate between benign and malignant
lesions, and identify patients with normal mammograms. The goal of the study
is to investigate the NMP66 blood test as a potential future screening
procedure for breast cancer.
"The key to fighting and treating breast cancer is early detection," said
David L. Corbet, President and Chief Operating Officer of Matritech.
"According to the American Cancer Society, five-year survival for women in
whom the disease is detected at its earliest stage is greater than 96
percent. However, survival for this length of time decreases to 21 percent
in women with late-stage, metastatic disease."
"Despite the encouraging progress that the medical community has made in
detecting breast cancer, only 62 percent of breast cancers diagnosed between
1989 and 1995 were found while still localized," added Corbet. "While
mammography is still the best detection method, the number of false
positives is high. Clearly, there is a need for a blood-based screening tool
to enhance existing methods of detecting breast cancer, and NMP66 has the
potential to fulfill this role."
"This is the type of test my patients have been hoping to use for over
twenty years," said Avi Ben-Ora M.D., a radiologist and former president of
the Arizona division of the American Cancer Society. "Because almost half
the women in the U.S. who should be getting annual mammograms are not, there
is a critical need for a serum-based test for breast cancer screening. Once
the performance of NMP66 is proven and becomes available, mammography and
breast ultrasound would only be needed for the specific localization of
abnormalities, and the number of unnecessary biopsies could be sharply
reduced."
"We anticipate an overwhelming response by patients. What woman wouldn't
want a blood test for breast cancer?" said V. Suzanne Klimberg, M.D., the
lead investigator on the trial, Director of the Breast Cancer Program and
Chief of the Division of Breast Surgical Oncology at the Arkansas Cancer
Research Center. "As a surgeon and researcher, I'm also interested in other
possible uses for a test like this, such as identifying cancers not visible
on mammogram, or determining if a patient has residual disease after surgery
or chemotherapy, when it is still treatable and before it can spread
further."
Last year, Matritech reported proof of clinical concept results for NMP66 in
the detection of breast cancer. Using Matritech's proprietary specimen
preparation and mass spectrometry procedures, NMP66 was found in all samples
from women with invasive breast cancer, and was absent in all "normal"
specimens. This data was presented last month in Santa Barbara, Calif. at
the 2nd Tumor Markers Conference sponsored by the M.D. Anderson Cancer
Center in Houston.
Detection of these breast cancer markers in blood was accomplished using a
novel approach for cancer marker detection, mass spectrometry, a technique
which the Company believes is immediately applicable to other cancer tests
it is developing. Mass spectrometry techniques for measuring the elevation
of specific proteins in blood is expected to improve the accuracy of the
tests in development by Matritech as well as expedite the introduction of
second generation, blood-based cancer diagnostic tests to clinical
laboratories worldwide. In addition to the mass spectrometry format,
Matritech is pursuing antibody-based immunoassays compatible with existing
clinical laboratory instrumentation.
Matritech's nuclear matrix protein (NMP) core technology correlates levels
of NMPs in body fluids to the presence of cancer. Multiple published
clinical studies have validated this ability of NMPs to detect early stage
cancerous abnormalities. Matritech has a pipeline of NMP-based products in
development for the detection of major cancers including cervical, breast,
colon and prostate cancers. The NMP22 Test Kit for bladder cancer is cleared
for marketing in the United States for management and screening of
individuals at risk of bladder cancer. It also is sold in China, Europe and
Japan where it is approved for bladder cancer screening.
Matritech, Inc., based in Newton, Mass., is using its NMP technology,
discovered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and licensed
exclusively to Matritech, to develop and commercialize innovative serum-,
cell- and urine-based NMP diagnostics that enable physicians to reliably
detect and monitor the presence of bladder, cervical, breast, colon and
prostate cancers. |
