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Biotech / Medical : Biotech News -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sim1 who wrote (1265)	1/14/2002 11:49:22 AM
From: nigel bates	Respond to of 7143

REHOVOT, Israel, ERKRATH, Germany, and NEW YORK, Jan. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Biopharmaceutical company Peptor announced today that it will begin a multicenter Phase II clinical trial in the United States of its experimental diabetes drug DiaPep277(TM). The peptide-based drug has been shown in a published study to stop the progression of type 1 diabetes (formerly known as juvenile diabetes). DiaPep277 will be tested against latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA), a disease in which the body's immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys beta cells in the pancreas, rendering the body unable to synthesize its own insulin. LADA patients, who are often incorrectly diagnosed as having type 2 diabetes, may comprise 10-20% -- or up to 3.2 million -- of American adults suffering from type 2 diabetes. Peptor's DiaPep277 will be the first drug in a Phase II clinical trial in the United States involving LADA patients. In a paper published in The Lancet (November 24, 2001), Peptor demonstrated in a Phase II clinical trial that DiaPep277 arrested disease progression, prevented further destruction of insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells, and reduced the need for injected insulin in newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes patients compared to control patients. An additional analysis by Peptor of two of its Phase II clinical trials demonstrated that treatment with DiaPep277 significantly prolonged patients' internal insulin production. Peptor has received Investigational New Drug (IND) approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct DiaPep277 trials on LADA. The company plans to begin Phase III trials of DiaPep277 for type 1 diabetes later in 2002. The LADA trial will involve 100 patients and five participating institutions. Peptor is a biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of immunotherapeutic drugs to treat autoimmune diseases and cancers. Founded in 1993, Peptor is based in Rehovot, Israel and Erkrath, Germany....