Clinical trial shows clinical Benefits!!

[RandyW]

Cancer drug shows good

results

Clinical trial shows clinical

benefits

Updated: Thursday, 02 Apr 2009, 8:37 PM EDT

Published : Thursday, 02 Apr 2009, 1:00 PM EDT

Alyssa Rossomme

LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) - Investigational drug EC145 works on cancer like a Trojan Horse. Lung cancer patient Daniel Douglas, of Brookston, is taking part in a clinical trial with the drug.

"It sounded like a pretty good science," said Douglas, whose previous two therapies to treateis stage four lung cancer were unsuccessful.

The EC145 drug was developed at Endocyte, a Purdue Research Park company. President Ron Ellis said it uses the vitamin Folate to target cancer cells.

"This is actually a very clever approach. Folate's required for cell division. Cancer cells are dividing rapidly so they need lots of folate to support their growth. So in this case, the folate acts like a Trojan horse, to be able to target the drug to these rapidly dividing cancer cells and then tricks them into taking in the folate, and when they do that they bring in this drug to be able to kill the cells," explained Ellis.

About 40 lung cancer patients, who have all failed prior therapies, are in Horizon Oncology Center's clinical trial. Analysis finds in 35 percent of patients, the tumors stopped growing. In two-thirds of those patients, the tumor stopped growing for at least six months. One patient had significant tumor reduction.

"This is a very exciting result. It's showing we have a potential potent drug against lung cancer, which as you know, is a very difficult cancer to treat," said Dr. Wael Harb, Horizon Oncology Center Medical Director.

Dr. Harb said more study on the drug is needed. Yet, many are excited about the potential it has for treating cancer in patients around the world.

"I'm hoping to erradicate the cancer from my system...If it helps me, then hopefully it'll help a lot of other people," said Douglas.

"It's rewarding in that there's been years and years of work and development and effort put in by the Endocyte team, the employees that are here, to be able to develop this drug. They're very excited to see that work have a positive impact in a patient's life," said Ellis.

Patients enrolled in the study were also treated with EC20, which works to identify tumors that over-express the folate receptor. EC20 is being developed to help clinicians identify those patients most likely to respond to treatment with Endocyte's folate-targeted therapeutics, such as EC145.