Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (MNTA)

[biopearl]

In 1978, as a senior resident in medicine at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston I attended a Saturday morning conference given by the famous Dr. Judah Folkman at the old Peter Bent Brigham hospital, one of the historic predecessors of the new Brigham and Women's hospital which opened in 1980. Dr. Folkman was such a committed researcher that he had a bedroom adjoining his lab so he could stay close to his experiments, one of which was to look at the effects of heparin (and protamine) on cancer cell growth. His lab results were electrifying to a young medical resident. The petri dishes he showed had large holes in the treated cellular sheets of malignant cells that were reminiscent of Flemming's 1928 concentric circles of no growth of bacteria near penicillium mold. The applicability to patients of course was limited by bleeding in the doses required achieve any clinical effect. (Of course other antiangiogenic agents are in clinical use today.) Now 36 years later the data on Momenta's phase I/2 study is released with not too much notice so far. And yet an ORR of 90 + percent and some PR responses in a disease with a 4% 5 year survival rate is worthy of note. Very worthy. The drug has orphan status. While very early in its clinical study lifetime perhaps tomorrow's conference might provide some sense as to whether fast track or best available therapy status might be granted by FDA at some point. I think we will see a (justifiably) enthusiastic presentation tomorrow and in coming conferences. A spark of hope in a hopeless disease always gets my attention. Regards, bp