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

To: bob zagorin who wrote (20913)	5/16/1998 6:30:00 AM
From: Henry Niman	Respond to of 32384

bob, The toxicity reported in the abstract was from Panretin oral treatment of KS and I'm not sure how widespread such side effects are. Most of the detail on oral treatment has come from Targretin, which primarily activates the RXRs, not the RARs and I'm fairly sure that the KS patients described in the abstract were also taking PIs. LGND did do a psoriasis trial with oral Panretin, but has not released the details (there was a response in about half of the treated population, but I think that the numbes were small). They are currently doing a similar Targretin trial, which may be due to some of the side effects described for oral Panretin treatment of KS. First generation compounds generally have room for improvement, and in the case of Panretin, some of the room seems to be on some side effects. A similar situation exists for PIs. Although the compounds can dramatically improve the health of HIV infected patients, they drugs can have metabolic side effects including protease pouch and diabetes. In addition, for KS there are several new drugs and some patients may be more interested in withdrawing and trying something new if side effects arise. Since PIs also affect tryglycerides and cholesterol levels, some patients may have attributed such changes to combining Panretin with PIs. I am virtually certain that the KS patients were taking several drugs in addition to Panretin.