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

To: Gulo who wrote (67)	4/17/2002 12:14:01 PM
From: geoffb_si	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103

Hi, Gulo: I agree on all your points! They DO seem to be marketing themselves better lately, with a lot of media coverage, albeit mostly local. (See Calgary Herald article below, dated today). In the end, it will be trial results that will determine the long-term fate of ONC. So far, their results are quite good (Phase I). Good luck to you, too! Geoff ----------------------------------------------------------- Cancer victims push for access to drug David Heyman, Calgary Herald, April 17, 2002 News that a Calgary Company may have a cure for cancer has led to a gusher of calls from hundreds of ill people desperate to have the experimental treatment. Brad Thompson, president and CEO of Oncolytics, said Tuesday he gets five to 10 calls a day from people suffering from cancer begging for its drug Reolysin. Reolysin has shown tremendous promise in clinical trials, but it will take a few more years before Health Canada has enough data to approve its distribution to the general public. Thompson said it is very difficult to tell people they can’t have a drug that hold as-yet-unproven life-saving possibilities, but government rules forbid it for the time being. "They’re thinking the more we focus on getting the product developed, the sooner it’s out on the market, so everybody can take advantage of it.” Thompson said Tuesday. "It’s tough on individual people, but from a population perspective I think they’re probably correct.” One such caller to Oncolytics this week was Dorothy Martell of Calgary, whose ex-husband Robert has a tumour covering half his head and expects to die soon. Martell said she read about Reolysin and figures Robert should be allowed to get a dose because he has nothing to lose. "Why in the name of God don’t they have some compassion to let some people try this” she said. “We’re grasping for what we can grasp for." Robert Martell, contacted at his New Brunswick home, said the chemotherapy and radiation treatments he’s received don’t seem to be having any effect on his tumour. But he’s willing to try anything new. “Why give up? You have to fight,” he said. Health Canada has already fast-tracked the approval process for Reolysin, and Oncolytics announced Tuesday it has begun testing the drug on men with prostate cancer. In the first round of testing, officially called Phase 1, drugs are tested only to see if they’re harmful. In that stage, Reolysin shrunk or stopped the growth of tumours in 12 of 18 terminally ill patients who had no more than a few months to live and who had exhausted all other avenues of treatment. Reolysin was only expected to work in about two-thirds of cancers anyway, said Thompson, because some tumours are not susceptible to its properties. Oncolytics was not allowed to choose the kinds of cancers in the Phase 1 trial. Phase II trials, which are to test how well the drugs work, have already begun for patients with glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer, and prostate cancer. Another trial, to which Reolysin will be injected into the bloodstream rather than directly into the tumour should also begin this year. Thompson said he expect Reolysin to be more than 90 per cent effective for glioblastomas and pancreatic cancer and effective for two-thirds of prostate cancers.