New Clinical Findings Presented at Leading Scientific
Meeting
BERKELEY HEIGHTS, NJ, December 4, 2000
- Genta Incorporated (Nasdaq:
GNTA
) announced that investigators reported a high level of clinical
activity with Genasense
TM
, Gentas lead antisense compound, in patients with acute leukemia.
The results were presented on Saturday at the annual meeting of the
American Society of Hematology in San Francisco.
The ongoing study is being conducted under an NCI Cooperative
Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) at Ohio State
University. The study has enrolled patients who have either
relapsed from, or were refractory to, standard forms of
antileukemic therapy. Genasense was combined with a standard
regimen of two other drugs, fludarabine and cytosine arabinoside.
Initial results of the study have shown that 5 of the first 10
patients achieved a clinical response. The responses were
especially noteworthy since 3 of the 5 responding patients had
previously received high dose therapy with cytosine
arabinoside.
The investigators also reported data showing reduction of Bcl-2
protein levels, the target of Genasense
TM
, after treatment with the drug. Using both Western blot analysis
as well as an extremely sensitive molecular assay (known as
real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction), Bcl-2
protein content in the patients leukemic cells was consistently
reduced.
Dr. Stanley Frankel, a leukemia specialist and Gentas newly
appointed Director of Clinical Operations in hematologic oncology,
commented: "This high level of activity in resistant patients is
extremely encouraging. Moreover, 7 of the 10 patients in this study
were age 55 or older. The observations that Genasense
TM
was well-tolerated in older patients support the Companys
plans to broadly develop the drug in this population for whom
standard forms of therapy would be excessively toxic."
