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Biotech / Medical : Ligand (LGND) Breakout! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tonyt who wrote (18402)	4/1/1998 8:54:00 AM
From: Mr. Giller	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 32384

Hey tonyt, What does BTW stand for?

To: tonyt who wrote (18402)	4/1/1998 10:41:00 AM
From: bob zagorin	Respond to of 32384

since tonyt brough up subject of gnta on lgnd thread, here's some good news today. Genta Announces Issue of Patent for Lead Antisense Compound That Targets the Bcl-2 Gene, Implicated in Prostate and Other Cancers SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 1, 1998--Genta Incorporated (Nasdaq: GNTA) today announced that it has received notification from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that a patent has been issued for Genta's lead antisense compound, G3139, which is under development as a potential anticancer therapeutic. The patent provides protection for the composition of G3139 and its analogues. "The protection this patent provides will aid in our continued development of G3139 as a highly promising therapeutic for a variety of cancers," stated Kenneth G. Kasses, President and Chief Executive Officer of Genta. As an antisense compound, G3139 is designed to act toward a specific gene and prevent it from triggering the production of disease-related protein. G3139's target, the bcl-2 gene, interferes in the normal mortality of cells (apoptosis) and has been implicated in prostate cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, melanoma, breast and other cancers. Recent findings on G3139 were reported in the February 1998 issue of Nature Medicine, a leading scientific peer-reviewed journal, concerning the effectiveness of the compound as a "chemosensitizer" that causes tumors to lose an acquired immunity to chemotherapy. In work conducted at the University of Vienna that modeled human melanoma, researchers showed that pre-treating laboratory mice with G3139 significantly increased the effectiveness of dacarbazine (DTIC), the most widely used chemotherapeutic agent in melanoma. The article reported that in 10 out of 13 animals so treated, cancerous tumors were completely eliminated. The article also noted that, in a separate experiment, G3139 used alone had a significantly greater effect in reducing tumor growth than did the three control treatments. In December 1997, Genta announced the start of a Phase I/IIa clinical trial of G3139 at New York City's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to evaluate the compound against prostate cancer. In addition, a Phase I/IIa study of G3139 is now nearing completion at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London to study the compound's effect on non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Genta plans to initiate other pre-clinical and clinical studies this year to evaluate the safety and efficacy of G3139 in other cancers. Genta Incorporated (Nasdaq: GNTA) is a biopharmaceutical company whose strategy consists of building a product and technology portfolio that represents varying degrees of development risk and market potential, including Anticode(tm) (antisense) products intended to treat cancer at its genetic source, oral controlled-release drugs and other genomics opportunities.