Geron Corp (GERN)

[Liquid_Bull]

Geron Corp. made an announcement while encouraging provisional results for a breast cancer treatment at the 2010 American Society of Clinical Oncology yearly meeting in Chicago.

Shares in the drug manufacturer, which focuses on cancer and chronic degenerative diseases, were up from7.5% to $5.75 in the most recent premarket trading.

The drug under discussion, imetelstat, is a telomerase inhibitor and demonstrated effectiveness in a Phase 1 clinical test in combination with chemotherapy.

Chief Medical Officer, Stephen M. Kelsey said that an opening 54% response rate is heartening given the lessened dose of chemotherapy during the treatment cycles.

He said that it has been seen to have good tolerability and exposures of drug, which surpass levels that have been linked with tumor inhibition in a number of models of human cancers.

Geron intends to begin a Phase 2 trial in the fourth quarter in almost 150 patients suffering from metastatic breast cancer, in order to test the effect on progression-free survival and the addition of imetelstat to the blend treatment schedule.