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

To: Miljenko Zuanic who wrote (6078)	4/7/2002 12:47:58 PM
From: mistermj	Respond to of 52153

Miljenko,you asked about plasma levels of endostatin. This is directly from Dr. Judah Folkman at AACR April 6,2002.Once again this report was written by a very well respected poster from the ENMD Raging Bull board. ragingbull.lycos.com Endostatin After discussion of Kisker et al. results: “…we’re beginning to find out that [as for IFNa] there may be a U-shaped [dose vs. response] curve for Endostatin, if you go very high…you can lose activity. Far, far above where the patients are. In mice you have to go twenty times above the point [of efficacy]. Nevertheless, about 250 ng/ml in the blood seems to be an effective dose for mice and for patients as reported at an Endostatin meeting by several groups three weeks ago at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.” A useful discussion of surrogate markers, highlighting the weaknesses of microvessel density and the possible usefulness of circulating EC progenitors; but I haven’t time to summarize it now. Also a brief discussion of the recent Kerbel paper in Science on relative unresponsiveness of p53-/- tumors to AIs (but only one dose tested); and of four AIs already showing significant results in the clinic: thalidomide for MM; anti-VEGF aptamer in pIII trial for macular degeneration; IFNa; and the HIV protease inhibitors which appear to be potent antiangiogenic molecules vs. Kaposi’s sarcoma. Rosiglitazone+Cytoxan trial now enrolled more than 1,000 patients in Boston. Celebrex in the combination trials we have discussed here several times. Difficult conceptual shift for the profession to adjust to, in meaning of the phrase “stable disease” from terrible failure to success. “We’re beginning to see patients, patients on Endostatin more than a year – a year and a half -- who greatly enjoy ‘stable disease’ because they have no side effects; no drug resistance so far, gained weight, get their energy back…and tell us not to call them ‘stable disease’ but to say cancer without disease.’ In conversation afterward, MJF reiterated that in the near term, he expects oncologists to combine into cocktails every available drug with AI activity, especially the low-toxicity and nontoxic ones, to counteract as many stimulatory factors as possible. He was rueful about the extraordinarily unfortunate misfit between the FDA cancer drug testing rules, which require even low-dose PI testing to be done on late-stage cancer patients who have usually failed multiple treatments and whose life expectancy may be quite small. By the nature of their activity, AIs very hard to properly evaluate in such a setting. C K Dexterhaven