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Biotech / Medical : Pharmacyclics (PCYC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: scaram(o)uche who wrote (698)	1/18/2004 1:36:02 PM
From: Icebrg	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 717

It is an interesting case. I would like to know why they saw so "good" results in the lung cancer group. With a (sub)-group size of 400 patients it shouldn't only be due to chance, or....? Anyhow, there clearly is a lot of doubt concerning the company at present. No doubt well-deserved based on previous efforts. As one of the main questions seems to be if the drug is working at all as advertised, I would like to offer still another abstract that seems to indicate that it might. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 2002 Oct 1; 54(2): 536-41. Preliminary studies of the effects of gadolinium texaphyrin on the growth and radiosensitivity of EMT6 cells in vitro. Rockwell S, Donnelly ET, Liu Y, Tang LQ. Department of Therapeutic Radiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06520-8040, USA. sara.rockwell@yale.edu PURPOSE: To investigate the effects of gadolinium texaphyrin (GdTx) on the growth and radiation response of cells in vitro, in a limited set of experiments designed to examine some areas of controversy concerning the effects of this compound. METHODS AND MATERIALS: Exponentially growing cultures of EMT6 mouse mammary tumor cells, grown in Dulbecco's Modified Eagle's Medium with 10% dialyzed fetal bovine serum, were treated with GdTx either prepared from powder or obtained as a solution similar to that used clinically, in either the presence or absence of equimolar ascorbic acid. Cell viability was measured using a clonogenic assay. RESULTS: Treatment with GdTx in the presence of ascorbic acid dramatically altered the growth, appearance, and behavior of the cells; treatment with GdTx in the absence of ascorbic acid had only minimal effects. The effects of the powdered drug and the solution were similar. GdTx used with equimolar ascorbic acid altered the radiation dose-response curves of cells irradiated under aerobic and hypoxic conditions; no significant changes were observed without ascorbic acid. CONCLUSIONS: The details of the protocols used in experiments examining the effects of GdTx have major effects on the outcomes. Our results suggest that differences in the protocols used by different groups in past studies with GdTx probably were important in producing the disparate results reported previously. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov Apart from the first failed phase III study there doesn't seem to be much in the way of real-life data that is supporting this agent. Erik