CANCER STUDY ‘CONFIRMS BENEFIT’ OF SIRTEX SIR-SPHERES
June 6th 2008 00:56
Tuesday June 3, 2008
Daily news on ASX-listed biotechnology companies
* ASX, BIOTECHS DOWN: AGENIX UP 11%, ANTISENSE DOWN 18%
* CANCER STUDY ‘CONFIRMS BENEFIT’ OF SIRTEX SIR-SPHERES
* CHEMGENEX PUBLISHES FURTHER PHASE II/III TRIAL DATA
* VIRAX CO-X-GENE LICENCEE POST ‘SUCCESSFUL’ PHASE IIB TRIAL
* ARANA, GREENOVATION COMBINE ON CANCER ANTIBODIES
* BIOSIGNAL PLACEMENT RAISES $400k
* LIVING CELL 1st NZ COMPANY TO TRADE ON US OTCQX
* GUN, LEO KHOURI INCREASE TO 14% OF BIOPROSPECT
* DECKCHAIR TAKES 6% OF INCITIVE
* QRX BEGINS ADR PROGRAM
* PROF IAN FRAZER JOINS AVANTOGEN’S HAWAII SCIENCE BOARD
THE MARKET
Nine of the Biotech Daily Top 40 stocks were up, 22 fell, six were unchanged and three were untraded.
Agenix was best, up 0.8 cents or 11.43 percent to 7.8 cents on modest volumes, followed by Phylogica up 11.11 percent to nine cents.
Antisense led the falls, down 1.2 cents or 17.91 percent to 5.5 cents, followed by Portland down 14.63 percent to 3.5 cents with Optiscan and Psivida down more than 10 percent.
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SIRTEX
Sirtex says a multicentre trial has shown its SIR-Spheres provide “substantial clinical benefit” for patients with colorectal cancer that has spread to the liver and have failed available chemotherapy options.
Sirtex said the independent, prospective, multicentre phase II study was conducted by the Italian Society of Locoregional Therapies In Oncology and reported at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference held in Chicago, May 30-June 3, 2008.
Sirtex said the study was the first prospective clinical trial of SIR-Spheres microspheres in the salvage therapy of patients with colorectal cancer liver metastases who have been heavily pre-treated with chemotherapy.
The company said the results showed “a median overall survival of 13 months, with an overall response rate of 24 percent and stable disease reported in a further 24 percent of patients.
The tumors shrank sufficiently to permit the surgeons to plan potentially curative surgery in two patients.
Patients that responded to SIR-Spheres microspheres had a significantly longer median survival compared to non-responders (16 months compared to eight months; p = 0.0006), with 40 percent of the responders remaining alive at two years compared to none of the non-responders.
Sirtex said treatment with SIR-Spheres microspheres was well tolerated, with side effects in the first 30-days post-treatment consisting mostly of fever in 16 percent of patients in the first 48 hours and 22 percent after 48 hours.
Sirtex chief executive officer Gilman Wong said the study results confirmed the results of retrospective studies on SIR-Spheres microspheres in routine clinical practice and compared favorably with the results of chemotherapy alone.
“These results clearly demonstrate that SIR-Spheres microspheres should, at a minimum, be used for patients with colorectal cancer liver metastases who have failed chemotherapy,” Mr Wong said.
“However, the investigators also noted the potential for SIR-Spheres microspheres to be combined with chemotherapy in order to further increase the effectiveness of treatment at earlier stages of the disease,” Mr Wong said.
Sirtex said its selective internal radiation therapy using SIR-Spheres microspheres was a treatment for inoperable liver tumors that delivered high doses of radiation directly to the site of the tumors.
The company said that in a minimally invasive treatment, millions of radioactive SIR-Spheres microspheres were infused via a catheter into the liver where they selectively targeted liver tumors with a dose of radiation up to 40 times higher than can be safely delivered by convention radiotherapy, while at the same time sparing healthy tissue.
Sirtex said clinical trails confirmed that patients with liver cancer treated with SIR-Spheres microspheres had higher response rates and longer time to progression of the disease as well as survival compared with other forms of treatment.
This leads to an increased life expectancy, greater periods with tumor activity and improved quality of life compared to chemotherapy alone, Sirtex said.
Selective internal radiation therapy is used in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Europe, Hong Kong, Israel, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Turkey with more than 7,500 patients treated to date.
Sirtex said that secondary liver cancer was the ultimate cause of death in one in three cancer sufferers and liver tumors were typically inoperable in 90 percent of cases and are usually incurable with chemotherapy.
Sirtex fell 22 cents or 5.66 percent to $3.67.
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