follow the money (AFFITEC) and watch the belly button, not the eyes...if you want to know where someone's going:
DENVER & TUSTIN, April 22, 2009: Peregrine Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: PPHM), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of cancer and serious virus infections, today announced that preclinical data presented during the AACR 100th Annual Meeting 2009 shows that one of itsFULLY HUMAN phosphatidylserine (PS)-targeting antibodies demonstrated encouraging signs of efficacy in a preclinical model of prostate cancer. These positive new data validate the anti-tumor potential of this human anti-PS antibody, which is similar to Peregrine's lead clinical stage antibody bavituximab and extends Peregrine's anti-PS antibody pipeline. Bavituximab is in Phase II clinical trials for the treatment of advanced breast cancer and non-small cell lung cancer.
Peregrine's PS-targeting antibodies bind to the cellular membrane component PS that is usually located inside cells, but which becomes exposed on the external surface of the cells that line the blood vessels of tumors (the tumor vascular endothelium), creating a specific target for anti-cancer treatments. By binding to PS, the antibodies are believed to help mobilize the body's immune system to destroy the tumor and the tumor blood vessels.
In today's presentation, researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and Affitech A/S reported that similar to bavituximab, the human antibody PGN635 [aka 1N11] targets and binds specifically to the tumor vascular endothelium(1). Treatment with androgen deprivation therapy or docetaxel substantially increased the percentage of tumor blood vessels with PGN635 binding.
