Interesting New Find Re: an Ariad Drug
Bellicum Pharmaceuticals is a Bio that is using Ariad's first drug candidate (AP1903) in combination with their own drug, to develope a Prostate Cancer Vaccine. Now I discover that they are also developing another drug which uses AP1903.
Only the veteran Ariad investors (like myself since 1994) will remember what I am about to say about AP1903, but here goes.
Somewhere about the year 2000 or 2001, Ariad developed a drug called AP1903, which was in effect a switch, if you will, to turn genes on and off in the body. Harvey, at the time, explained that when patients need to replace their immune systems, same is accomplished by doing a bone marrow transplant. The problem, however, was that quite often after a bone marrow transplant the T cells attack the patients healthy tissue and doctors were unable to stop this progression and the patients eventually died. AP1903 was designed to regulate the genes after a bone marrow transplant and prevent this process which is called "Graft vs Host Disease", or GVHD. Ariad put AP1903 through a Phase 1 clinical trial with exceptionally good results regarding toxcicity (efficacy was not tested in this Phase). Upon completion of Phase 1, Harvey (at the next few ensuing brokerage conferences) kept saying that a Phase 11 was in the planning stage. Phase 11 never happened, and eventually Harvey admitted that none will be done in the near future because, although the drug works well and is not toxic, the scientic community was not advanced enough to be able to utilize this drug. LO and behold, this is exactly what Bellicum is now doing with a drug they call "CaspaCIDE", which uses AP1903 as its "switch" to regulate genes in patients going through Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantations (HSCT)
This, once again, confirms my strong belief and confidence in Ariad's science and scientists. If you are interested, you can check out what I just said at Bellicum's website.
As usual, JMHO
Barry
