Patients involved in Novelos Therapeutics' pivotal Phase III trial live longer than expected

Dec 16 2009

BioMedReports.Com, the news portal which covers Wall Street's biomedical sector and delivers financial and investment intelligence to a community of highly informed investors, has published an exclusive interview with the CEO of Novelos Therapeutics, Inc. (OTCBB: NVLT), Harry S. Palmin.

It's become pretty obvious, even to the most casual biotech sector observer, that patients involved in Novelos' pivotal Phase III trial for lung cancer are living longer than expected.

"These patients with a median survival of eight to ten months unfortunately die pretty quickly," explains Palmin. "One year survival, which is another way to look at this, is just about 40%."

But Wall Street has begun to take more interest in the company and the study since over a year and a half after the enrollment target of patients was reached, the number of the expected deaths has not yet occurred.

In the interview, Palmin reveals:

"...Avastin is the only drug in non-small cell lung cancer, first line treatment, that showed a survival advantage. They showed a two month survival advantage, 12.3 months versus 10.3, but the drug has severe toxicities associated with it on top of the chemotherapy toxicities and it's very expensive. It's also only available to very few lung cancer patients because the histology it works for is non-squamous.

"The point that I'm trying to make is that given our current statistical projections, we should be on track to achieve or possibly even exceed our possible twelve and a half month median survival target.

"By way of background, we started the pivotal Phase III on lung cancer on the back of three Phase IIs," explains Palmin. "We saw dramatic survival advantages, better anti-tumor effects and in the United States, we saw doubling response rates and better toleration of chemotherapy."