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Biotech / Medical : EntreMed (ENMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dwight martin who wrote (1933)	5/21/1999 6:24:00 PM
From: marc ultra	Respond to of 2135

it expired. Here's the article c The Associated Press BOSTON (AP) -- A highly publicized experimental cancer drug that wiped out tumors in mice will be tested on patients for the first time in Boston later this year. The dramatic effect of the drug called endostatin has raised the hopes of cancer patients and the medical community. ''I think it's exciting, but of course you always have the risk that something will fail'' in early testing, said Dr. Judah Folkman, the Harvard University and Children's Hospital researcher whose assistant, Michael O'Reilly, discovered endostatin. Endostatin and a sister protein, angiostatin, work by destroying the tumors' ability to sprout new blood vessels, but do not harm normal cells. This makes cancer fall dormant or disappear altogether in lab animals, but no one knows if the same thing will happen in people. The first phase of the trial will check for adverse side effects, though researchers will also look for signs that the drug is halting progress of tumors. If the drug is found to be safe, a second phase will evaluate the drug's effectiveness. The first phase, to begin in the fall, will involve about 25 patients at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, all in Boston. Candidates must have solid tumors from lymphoma or cancers of the colon, breast and other organs. The initial tests will be sponsored by EntreMed Inc., a Maryland-based biotech company which licensed the right to develop endostatin from Boston's Children's Hospital. Two similar Phase I trials studying possible side effects, sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, will begin after the Boston trials. They will be done at the University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Institute in Houston and the University of Wisconsin's Comprehensive Cancer Center in Madison. Endostatin and angiostatin have been the subject of a roller coaster of speculation ever since an enthusiastic front-page story on Folkman in The New York Times a year ago. Doubts cropped up last fall when it was reported that scientists from the National Cancer Institute had not been able to reproduce Folkman's results. Then in February, an NCI team said it had at last duplicated Folkman's work by having the NCI scientists conduct the experiments at Folkman's laboratory in Boston. AP-NY-05-18-99 0901EDT