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Biotech / Medical : MAXM: Maxim Pharmaceuticals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SemiBull who wrote (3)	2/13/2002 6:02:51 AM
From: nigel bates	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 35

Maxim Scientists Present Research At AACR Meeting Highlighting New Pro-Apoptotic Cancer Drug Candidates Targeting Kinases and Other Key Enzymes and Receptors SAN DIEGO--(BW HealthWire)--Feb. 13, 2002-- Maxim Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Nasdaq:MAXM - news; SSE:MAXM) announced today that researchers will present this week data highlighting the scope of Maxim's apoptosis drug discovery program at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Apoptosis in Cancer Meeting in Kona, Hawaii. As will be described in the AACR presentation, the anti-cancer arm of the discovery program has identified a series of small-molecule compounds that induce apoptosis (cell death) against specific cancer types and a number of compounds that exhibit activity against chemo-resistant cancer lines. Multiple compounds from Maxim's drug discovery platform are currently advancing toward human clinical trials as part of the Company's internal development efforts and as a result of the research being performed under existing pharmaceutical collaborations. Oncology Platform Maxim has developed, and is using as the foundation for its drug discovery efforts, a proprietary assay that is targeted to the identification of compounds that can modulate programmed cell death, or apoptosis. Promising compounds are identified from large compound libraries using cell-based assays that monitor the activity of caspases, key enzymes that modulate and carry out the cellular signaling pathways involved in apoptosis. These assays are able to monitor activation of the caspase cascade inside a wide variety of living cells or cell lines derived from any organ system in the body. Maxim researchers have completed screening libraries comprising more than one-half million compounds, and more than 50 validated lead compounds have entered the company's development pipeline. These potential drug candidates are members of newly discovered pro-apoptotic compound families that specifically target certain cancer cells through a variety of novel or validated mechanisms depending upon the compound, with targets including certain key kinases and other enzymes, and certain receptors. Maxim's high-throughput technology possesses the flexibility to screen for the induction or inhibition of apoptosis in live cell lines to identify compounds that enhance cell survival or promote cell death. In Maxim's anti-cancer discovery program, the screening system can select compounds that induce apoptosis in cancer cells but not in normal cells. In addition, by simultaneously testing against different tumor types, drug candidates have been discovered which selectively induce apoptosis in tumor cells from cancers such as breast, lung, prostate and colorectal cancers. Many cancer cells develop resistance to chemotherapy by blocking apoptosis through a number of well-established mechanisms. Notably, researchers at the AACR conference will present in vitro studies suggesting that several validated compounds discovered with Maxim's cell-based assay possess the ability to initiate apoptosis even in cancer cell lines that have developed multi-drug resistance to traditional chemotherapeutic agents. Development and Commercialization Strategy Multiple compounds from Maxim's drug discovery platform are advancing through subsequent stages of the company's development pipeline. These include medicinal chemistry, preclinical testing and further in vivo testing, leading to clinical development of those compounds that demonstrate the most promising pharmaceutical characteristics. With the capacity to screen hundreds of thousands of compounds per year, Maxim expects to produce multiple drug candidates from its research program. ``The breadth of development candidates identified through our screening assay has generated a substantial number of potential anti-cancer drug candidates, affording us the opportunity to develop certain compounds ourselves while providing multiple opportunities for corporate partnering,'' said Larry G. Stambaugh, Maxim's chairman and chief executive officer. ``Key to our commercial strategy will be the completion of corporate partnering and licensing collaborations encompassing promising compounds. We believe that this strategy will provide the best opportunity to accelerate the development of compounds that have the potential to benefit patients, including those whose therapy is currently impaired by drug resistance and high toxicity.'' The company has already licensed to Shire-BioChem the MX2105 family of anti-cancer compounds for further development. In addition, under a collaboration with Celera Genomics, Maxim has screened 400,000 compounds and identified a number of compounds that are under preclinical development. Other anti-cancer compounds are under investigation with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) through two Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) grants awarded to Maxim. Maxim is also pursuing a development strategy with its apoptosis inhibitor program, a program that may form the basis for new drugs for a wide variety of disease targets where cell survival is essential. Positive data in animal models of myocardial infarction, stroke and hepatitis for these classes of compounds were presented at the American Heart Association Meeting in August 2001. The company's apoptosis inducer and apoptosis inhibitor compounds represent early stage, investigational drug candidates, and none have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or any international regulatory agency.