GLG News by Oncologists Specializing in Hematologic Malignancies in the U.S.

Favrille's patient specific immunothearpy is undergoing phase II clinical trial for indolent B-cell lymphoma in Europe The trial is accruing patients, so it is feasible but no data about efficacy is available yet The role of favid has to be identified in realtion to the block buster antibody Rituximab...

GSK's Nelarabine is already FDA approved for refractory and relapsed T-cell ALL and T-cell NHL and is marketed in the US as Arannon. The drug is a cytotoxic agentwhich produced durable complete responses in around a quarter of adult and pediatric patients but was assocaited with rare but severe neurotoxicity...

Merck's HPV vaccine is being widely accepted by patients, providers, and governmental agencies and third party payers The vaccine has potential to prevent around 70 % of cervical cancer cases and majority of pre-cacncetouscervical lesions and abnormal papsmears. The direct measure of efficacy will take...

BMS Ixabepilone is a cytotoxic agent taht is being studies in a multitude of pediatric and adult solid tumors All clinical trials are early Phase ( 1 & 2) , so efficacy is a guessing matter for now The indication for the NDA is very naroow: breast cancer patients refractory to taxanes, anthracycline,...

Safarenib ( Bayer/Onyx) showed significant efficacy with favorable safety profile in patients with advanced hepatocellular cancer, which is associated with hig mortality. Approval of this agent in Europe and The US for liver cancer is almost inevitable. As an oral multi-kinase inhibitor , Nexavar has...

OSI just styarted Phase I trials of its oral inhibitor of IGF-1 receptor , which  is involved in tumor cell growth and survival of several human cancers. This agent has shown efficacy in colrectal human tumor animal models and synergistic with Tarceva in lung and pancreatic tumor models...

GSK's IV toptecan is used for traetment of many solid tumors. The PO formulation increased survival in small cell lung cancer patients in a randomized phase III trial as compared to best supportive care. The formulation has no significant antitumor effect and unlikely to be precribed by oncologists

Curagen's belinostat is a HDAC inhibitorwhich in hase II trials appears to have modest efficacy in patients with relapsed cutaneous T-cell lymphoma and some patients with carcinoma, especially ovarian Other HDAC inhbitors are in development mostly for hematological malignancies like AML and MDS Belinostat...

Favrille's Inc. is a patient specific immunotherapy being developed for indolent NHL No efficacy data is yet available and it will take years to get survival data. Its role in the setting of Rituxan( Genentech) and more recently Valcade ( Millenium) and Revlimid ( Celgene) are yet to be e...

In a large randomized  trial , Genentech's Avastin , wheen added to Interferon, doubled progression-free survival and almost tripled the tumor response rates in patients with advanced kidney cancer. These results are impressive, but it remains to be determined If Avastin will add to the efficacy...