ChemGenex Says Drug Rids Leukemia in Some Patients (Update2)
By Simeon Bennett
June 2 (Bloomberg) -- ChemGenex Pharmaceuticals Ltd., an Australian drugmaker, said its experimental leukemia treatment cleared the disease from the blood of 85 percent of patients who didn’t benefit from Novartis AG’s Gleevec.
Omacetaxine mepesuccinate, as the drug is called, also eradicated the disease from the bone marrow of four out of 40 patients with an early form of chronic myeloid leukemia, according to data presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in Orlando, Florida, today.
“These results suggest that omacetaxine may represent the first viable treatment option for this population of patients who currently have no established treatment options,” Jorge Cortes, who led the study at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said in a company statement today.
Geelong, Victoria-based ChemGenex, which has never made a profit, plans to use the results from the third and final stage of human testing to complete a marketing application to U.S. regulators by September. Global sales of treatments for the drug-resistant form of the disease may reach $500 million by 2020, said Shane Storey, a biotechnology analyst with Wilson HTM in Brisbane, in a report last month.
ChemGenex shares rose 0.5 Australian cent, or 0.9 percent, to 56.5 cents in Sydney. The shares have gained 22 percent this year, compared with a 7.9 percent gain in the All Ordinaries Index of Australia’s largest 497 companies by market value.
Chronic myeloid leukemia, or CML, is a slow-progressing disease in which a genetic flaw triggers a person’s bone marrow to produce too many white blood cells, which don’t mature and aren’t able to perform their normal infection-fighting role. About 4,830 people were diagnosed with the disease in the U.S. last year, with a median age of 67, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Yew Trees
Omacetaxine is derived from the yew tree known as Cephalotaxus harringtonia. Its medicinal properties were probed in a U.S. National Cancer Institute screening program in the 1970s funded after former President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer. The same project uncovered Bristol-Myers’ breast- cancer drug, Taxol, derived from Pacific yew trees.
Omacetaxine is the most advanced medicine for patients with a genetic mutation that makes them resistant to Novartis’s best- selling cancer drug Gleevec or Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s Sprycel. Merck & Co. stopped recruiting patients for trials of a similar product developed with Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. in 2007 because of adverse reactions.
Gleevec, also sold as Glivec, earned Basel, Switzerland- based Novartis $3.7 billion last year, according to Bloomberg data.
White Blood Cells
Tests on 66 people with CML showed omacetaxine returned white blood cells to normal levels in 85 percent of 40 patients with the earliest stage, 31 percent of 16 people with a more advanced stage, and 20 percent of 10 people with the most advanced stage, ChemGenex said in the statement. The main side effect was a “reversible and transient” decrease in the bone marrow’s ability to produce white blood cells, the company said.
If approved, the company has said it plans to start selling the drug on its own in the U.S. and seek a partner for sales in Europe. ChemGenex raised A$18.4 million selling new stock this year to help take the medicine to market.
To contact the reporter on this story: Simeon Bennett in Singapore at sbennett9@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: June 2, 2009 03:04 EDT
