Xyotax's promising response
Cell Therapeutics, of Seattle, US said that two studies using Xyotax, its anti-cancer nce, in combination with platinates in patients with solid tumours, reported preliminary data that showed an overall response rate of 68%. The majority of patients on the two studies had tumour types that are either intrinsically resistant to or had developed resistance to taxane and/or platinate therapy.
'I am very impressed with the tolerability profile of Xyotax. On my study, we have patients who have received more than eight cycles of treatment and are continuing on therapy,' said John Nemunaitis, medical director at the Mary Crowley Medical Research Center in Dallas, Texas. 'But what is even more impressive is that 11 of the 22 patients had failed prior paclitaxel and in these patients we are either seeing a response or prolonged stable disease.'
Xyotax in combination with platinates was well tol-erated with patients who achieved a partial response receiving a median of 8.6 cycles (range 2-12) and with those who achieved stable disease receiving a median of four cycles (range 2-6). 'We are particularly encour-aged to see the high response rate in the ovarian can-cer patients on the two studies, with six of the nine patients (67%) achieving a partial response,' said Jack W. Singer, M.D., research chair of CTI. 'The safety and tolerability of the combination of Xyotax and platinum is impressive given that these patients were heavily pre-treated, having received on average three prior chemotherapy regimens (range 1-10).'
About Xyotax
Xyotax is a pharmaceutical that links paclitaxel, the active ingredient in Taxol, to a biodegradable polyglutamate polymer. This polymer technology results in a new chemical entity, designed to selectively deliver higher and potentially more effective levels of active chemotherapeutics to tumours. Blood vessels in tumour tissue, unlike blood vessels in normal tissue, are porous to molecules like polyglutamate. Based on preclinical studies, it appears that Xyotax is preferentially trapped in the tumour blood vessels allowing significantly more of the dose of chemotherapy to localize in the tumour. Because more of the chemotherapy is targeted to the tumour and the levels of chemotherapy delivered to normal tissue are reduced, Xyotax may be potentially more effective and have less severe side effects than currently available chemotherapeutics.