Replies to post #54073 on Innovation Pharmaceuticals Inc (IPIX)

[BonelessCat]

There are about 30 articles published on Pemetrexed development (Alimta) at Eli Lilly. Menon was the toxicologist and pharmacoligist in recombining pemetrexed with buffers and other compounds that became Alimta.

Here are two from PubMed:

1. Treatment regimens including the multitargeted antifolate LY231514 in human tumor xenografts.

Teicher BA, Chen V, Shih C, Menon K, Forler PA, Phares VG, Amsrud T.

Clin Cancer Res. 2000 Mar;6(3):1016-23.


2. MTA (LY231514) in combination treatment regimens using human tumor xenografts and the EMT-6 murine mammary carcinoma.

Teicher BA, Alvarez E, Liu P, Lu K, Menon K, Dempsey J, Schultz RM.

Semin Oncol. 1999 Apr;26(2 Suppl 6):55-62.

[dmattingly62]

Ahrdee, what seems to be lost here is the significance of Dr Menons role. It's ALL about selection. This is Menons gift. Once the compound enters the clinic it's autopilot. It either does what it's hoped to do or it does not. Make no mistake about it, Dr Menon's role is arguably the most important one hence the Presidents Recognition Award. his Have a great day!

[loanranger]

"Was it more than running an animal testing lab for Lilly?"

Both of the examples cited in response to your question refer to the testing and evaluation of certain formulations on xenografts:
"Xenotransplantation (xenos- from the Greek meaning "foreign"), is the transplantation of living cells, tissues or organs from one species to another.[1] Such cells, tissues or organs are called xenografts or xenotransplants."

Obviously the good Dr. did more than run an animal testing lab, but the examples provided establish that what he did was animal testing.

Another response suggests that the importance of that process can't be understated.

I think only someone with experience in the specific processes mentioned (lead selection and pre-clinical development) could tell us whether it was appropriate to use the subjective phrase "key role" here:
"At Lilly, Dr. Menon played a key role in lead selection and pre-clinical development of Gemzar and Alimta, two anti-cancer drugs which have generated billions of dollars in yearly revenue." The 2 examples provided were the only 2 returns for Dr. Menon in a PubMed search for Pemetrexed, which returned a total of 1,735 items.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Pemetrexed