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Biotech / Medical : Elan Corporation, plc (ELN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: scaram(o)uche who wrote (1637)	2/12/2002 1:20:55 PM
From: scaram(o)uche	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10345

study Dynavax and Coley..... the adjuvant activity is very real and very potent....... News Release INEX PUBLISHES DATA ON OLIGOVAX VACCINE DELIVERY TECHNOLOGY IN JOURNAL OF PHARMACOLOGY AND EXPERIMENTAL THERAPEUTICS For immediate release: Sep 20, 2001 VANCOUVER - Inex Pharmaceuticals Corporation ("INEX"; TSE: IEX) announced today that promising preclinical data on its early-stage OligoVax therapeutic vaccine platform has been published in the September 2001 issue of The Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. Dr. Pieter Cullis, INEX’s Senior Vice President, Research, said that short sequences of DNA called oligonucleotides (oligos) are known to stimulate the immune system and may have the potential to treat a number of diseases. This recent publication shows that when these oligos are encapsulated inside INEX’s proprietary lipid-based drug delivery technology, immune stimulation is up to 20 times greater than generated by oligos in their free form. Cullis said the Journal article expands on data presented earlier this year at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in New Orleans, Louisiana on INEX’s OligoVax therapeutic vaccine platform. OligoVax is the combination of the oligo encapsulated inside the delivery technology with the incorporation of a specific disease marker, called an antigen. OligoVax combines the necessary components, including DNA, a delivery system and one or more associated antigens, to be identified by the immune system as an invading virus or bacteria. The result is an attack by the immune system directed toward disease cells throughout the body that are associated with the antigen or antigens. The OligoVax platform can also enable immune stimulatory activity when using different chemical structures of the oligos. Cullis said INEX is currently evaluating the OligoVax technology with antigens associated with a specific cancer. Results from these studies, expected before the end of 2001, will help the company design a full development program for OligoVax. If these studies continue to be positive, INEX would seek to acquire rights to certain tumour-associated antigens for its own internal development and seek collaborations with companies whose proprietary antigens can be combined with INEX’s OligoVax platform to form therapeutic products against specific cancers and other diseases. Each antigen applied to the OligoVax platform could yield a new proprietary product. INEX is a Canadian biopharmaceutical company that utilizes novel therapeutic compounds and proprietary drug delivery systems to commercialize improved therapies for the treatment of cancer. INEX’s product pipeline is comprised of product candidates from two platform technologies – targeted chemotherapy and novel oncology compounds, called oligonucleotides. The company’s lead product, Onco TCS, is a targeted chemotherapeutic that is in a pivotal Phase II/III clinical trial as a treatment for relapsed aggressive non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The trial is expected to provide sufficient data to seek marketing approval, with a regulatory filing in late 2002 or early 2003. Onco TCS is being developed under a $60 million joint venture agreement with Elan Corporation, plc. INEX contact: Ian Mortimer Senior Manager, Investor Relations Inex Pharmaceuticals Corp. Tel: 604-419-3200 Email: info@inexpharm.com Website: www.inexpharm.com Media contact: Karen Cook Boas or Maria LoScerbo James Hoggan & Associates Inc. Tel: 604-739-7500 Email: kcook@hoggan.com INEX’s common shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the trading symbol “IEX”. J Pharmacol Exp Ther 2001 Sep;298(3):1185-92 Immune stimulation by a CpG-containing oligodeoxynucleotide is enhanced when encapsulated and delivered in lipid particles. Mui B, Raney SG, Semple SC, Hope MJ. Inex Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. bmui@inexpharm.com The therapeutic benefit from phosphorothioate oligodeoxynucleotides (PS ODN) containing immune stimulatory sequences (ISS) has been demonstrated in animal models of cancer and infection. In particular, when CpG-containing PS ODN are administered to mice, activation of macrophages and dendritic, NK, T, and B cells occurs, resulting in the release of an array of cytokines, including interleukin-12 (IL-12), interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma), and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha). We have previously described stabilized antisense-lipid particles (SALP) for the i.v. administration of antisense ODN [Biochim Biophys Acta (2001) 1510:152--166]. Given the propensity for SALP to target macrophages in vivo it was of interest to determine whether they could enhance the potency of CpG ODN to induce an immune response. In this report we show that when CpG-containing SALP are administered intravenously to ICR mice the plasma concentrations of IL-12, IFN-gamma, IL-6, monocyte chemoattractant protein-1, and TNF-alpha are greatly increased compared with the same dose of free ODN. The pattern of cytokine induction indicates that the immune response is T helper cell type 1-biased, similar to that observed for PS CpG ODN ISS in general. Furthermore, when phosphodiester (PO) ODN is substituted for PS ODN in the SALP formulation cytokine induction is even greater at the early time points, in marked contrast to free PO ODN, which is inactive. These results demonstrate that the immunogenicity of ISS is not only enhanced by encapsulation in lipid particles, which more closely mimic the way ISS DNA would normally be presented to antigen presenting cells by pathogens in vivo, but also SALP enable unmodified PO CpG ODN to be used as immune stimulants.