Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (201)	5/19/1998 7:00:00 AM
From: Eric Jorgenson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 810

News report--NOT A PRESS RELEASE! From today's NYTimes. Anyone have a stop order in at 84? May 19, 1998 Man-Made Virus Kills Cancer in Tests By NICHOLAS WADE novel form of cancer treatment, based on recent discoveries about the inner working of tumor cells, has shown impressive results with a small group of patients with advanced head and neck cancers. The agent of treatment is a genetically altered adenovirus, one of the viruses that cause the common cold. The results were presented Monday by Dr. David H. Kirn, medical director of Onyx Pharmaceuticals, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Los Angeles. The Onyx virus has been designed to kill cancer cells but spare normal ones by exploiting a genetic difference between them. This fine discrimination means it can be injected into tumors in heavy doses without causing harm to the patient other than flu-like symptoms. The new study is a Phase 2 trial, one in which the developers of an experimental treatment try to find the best dose and mode of therapy before embarking on the definitive test of a Phase 3 trial with statistically meaningful numbers of patients. In the Phase 2 trial reported Monday, 10 patients with advanced head and neck cancer were given both the virus and two standard chemotherapy agents known as Cisplatin and 5-FU. All patients responded to the treatment. Two had complete regression of their cancers; the tumors disappeared and no trace of cancerous cells could be seen in tissue samples inspected with a microscope. The patients cannot be said to be cured, however, because they have been free of cancer for only 4 months. Of the other 8 patients, one had a 40 percent shrinkage of the tumor, and seven had reductions of between 50 percent and 95 percent. With the chemotherapy agents alone, 35 percent of head and neck cancer patients have a significant response, meaning their tumors shrink by half or more, compared with the 90 percent response rate seen so far in the new study. Earlier trials with the Onyx virus alone showed a significant response rate, including two complete remissions among 13 patients, but the company had hoped the virus would work even better in combination with chemotherapy. Experience with the new drug is too short to permit any conclusion about its ultimate effectiveness, but physicians who have used it are encouraged so far. "I have treated people for 25 years and have never seen anything quite like this before," said Dr. James Arseneau, a medical oncologist at the Albany Medical Center Hospital in Albany, N.Y. Arseneau began using Onyx-015, as the genetically engineered virus is called, in January in treatment protocols designed by the company. So far he has treated 6 patients, all of whom have responded in varying degrees. He said, "I'm having fun again -- it gives you the heart and courage to go forward, though we're in a very preliminary phase here." Dr. Fadlo Khuri, an oncologist at the M.D. Anderson Center in Houston, said that "if this degree of response holds up, it will be astonishing," but he noted that higher response rates are often seen in Phase 2 tests than in the more objective Phase 3 trials that follow. He said all of his three patients have responded to the new treatment. Kirn, Onyx's medical director, said the virus was being tested in academic centers by independent experts like Khuri and Arseneau. Onyx covered the patients' costs but made no payment to the investigators, Kirn said. These investigators, he said, are saying that "it's not just that everyone is responding, but the magnitude and rapidity of the response is very unusual." Many drugs which look promising in early trials often falter at later stages of clinical testing, and physicians have learned to regard even spectacular individual cases with circumspection. Nevertheless, the Onyx virus has seemed sufficiently promising to its sponsor that the company is now testing it against several other kinds of cancers, including those of the pancreas, ovary and stomach. The virus works only against tumors which have an inactivated version of a gene that normally thwarts development of tumors. The P53 gene is inactivated in 50 percent of all human cancers, and in 70 percent of head and neck cancers. The Onyx virus was conceived in 1992 by Frank McCormick, then the company's chief scientific officer and now director of the University of California, San Francisco cancer center. He saw how the adenovirus could be engineered in a way that made it harmless to normal cells but lethal to tumor cells with inactive p53 genes. Onyx Pharmaceuticals is located in Richmond, Calif. Experimental trials of Onyx-015 are being conducted at 10 centers in the United States, Britain and Canada.

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (201)	5/19/1998 11:33:00 AM
From: Uncle Frank	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 810

ONYX NEWS IN TODAY'S SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS (PAGE 1) Published Tuesday, May 19, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News Reworked cold virus becomes weapon in war on tumor cells BY LISA M. KRIEGER Mercury News Staff Writer An anti-cancer strategy that directs a common cold virus to seek and destroy tumor cells has paid off impressively, eradicating or significantly shrinking the tumor in nine out of 10 terminal patients. The approach, designed by Onyx Pharmaceuticals of Richmond, is the latest of a new generation of cancer treatments based on an improved understanding of how normal cells turn deadly. The traditional tools of cancer therapy -- surgery, chemotherapy and radiation have failed to win the war on cancer, the second leading cause of death in the United States. This fourth wave of cancer therapy, sometimes used in conjunction with the older therapies, attacks the genetic origins of the disease. ''These are exciting times we're living in,'' said Dr. Lisa Bailey of the American Cancer Society and a surgical oncologist at Summit and Alta Bates Medical Centers in Berkeley/Oakland. ''We are discovering promising new ways that cancer cells can be attacked, using biologic and genetic therapies.'' The new therapeutic virus known as Onyx-015 is one of several new biologically based weapons that have been unveiled this week in Los Angeles at the annual meeting of American Society of Clinical Oncology, the nation's largest cancer conference.