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

To: Captain Jack who wrote (1039)	3/13/2002 9:32:36 AM
From: tuck	Respond to of 1137

>>SAN MATEO, Calif., March 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SciClone Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: SCLN - news) today announced that data presented at the World Congress of Gastroenterology in Bangkok, Thailand this month indicate that, after an additional 12-month follow-up period for difficult to treat chronic hepatitis B patients in Turkey, 71% of patients that used ZADAXIN in combination therapy with interferon continued to show a sustained response, versus only 10% for the patients that used interferon alone. ``One of the most difficult challenges in successfully treating a viral disease is to achieve a durable sustained response. All too often a successful end of therapy result changes into patient relapse weeks or months later,'' observed Alfred Rudolph, M.D., SciClone's Chief Operating Officer. ``The durability of ZADAXIN therapy demonstrated in this study is reflective of the durable sustained responses we have observed in other ZADAXIN clinical studies.'' The original data were presented at Digestive Disease Week in May of 2001. The original study analyzed patients in Turkey with antiHBe-positive chronic hepatitis B, a very difficult to treat group infected with the precore mutant of the hepatitis B virus, for which no therapy is consistently effective. Interferon is one of the most widely used approved therapies for the treatment of hepatitis B virus. In the original study, 21 patients received 26 weeks of ZADAXIN plus interferon followed by 26 weeks of interferon monotherapy and 10 patients received 52 weeks of interferon monotherapy alone. At the end of the 6-month, treatment-free follow-up period, 76% of patients receiving ZADAXIN plus interferon showed a sustained response, as measured by normalization of ALT and disappearance of hepatitis B virus DNA. By comparison, only 40% of patients receiving interferon monotherapy showed a sustained response after the 6-month follow-up period. When patients were observed for an additional 12-month follow-up period, 71% of patients receiving ZADAXIN plus interferon still showed a sustained response, versus only 10% of the patients receiving interferon monotherapy. ``These long-term data provide additional clinical evidence of ZADAXIN's ability to increase sustained responses, in even the most difficult to treat cases of chronic hepatitis B,'' commented Eduardo Martins, M.D., Ph.D., Medical Director of SciClone. ``This independent study supports our efforts to develop ZADAXIN as a critical component of combination drug therapies for infectious diseases and cancer.'' ZADAXIN has been administered without side effects to over 10,000 patients and is approved for sale in 26 countries, principally for the treatment of hepatitis B and hepatitis C, and certain cancers. ZADAXIN, an immune system enhancer (ISE), is a synthetic preparation of thymosin alpha 1, an immune system peptide that exists naturally in humans and whose activities are recognized to regulate the body's effective immune response to serious viral infections and certain cancers.<< snip Cheers, Tuck