Kosan Opens Registration Program for Lead Hsp90 Inhibitor, Tanespimycin, in Multip...(tient's level of M protein. Kosan ant...),Health

Kosan anticipates that the pivotal TIME-1 trial will begin later in 2007 or in early 2008. TIME-1 will be an open-label, randomized, multi-center trial that is designed to enroll over 450 patients with disease relapse following a single prior course of treatment (first-relapse). The trial is designed to compare two groups: patients treated with bortezomib plus tanespimycin and patients treated with bortezomib alone. Tanespimycin will be administered at a dose of 340 mg/m2 and all patients will receive standard doses of bortezomib (1.3 mg/m2). TIME-1 is designed with a primary endpoint of progression-free survival. Kosan anticipates providing more background on the TIME-1 trial design upon initiation.

About Tanespimycin

Tanespimycin has been shown to induce apoptosis of drug-sensitive and drug-resistant multiple myeloma cell lines. Tanespimycin also inhibits expression of various cell surface cytokines, such as IGF-1R and IL-6R, that are involved in growth, survival and drug resistance of multiple myeloma cells. Destabilizing client proteins with tanespimycin while blocking their degradation with bortezomib promotes the accumulation of cytotoxic proteins, leading to cell death.

Kosan reported data from a Phase 1b trial of tanespimycin in combination with bortezomib at the 2007 annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) on 56 patients enrolled in 7 dose cohorts (100-340 mg/m2 of tanespimycin; 0.7-1.3 mg/m2 of bortezomib; tanespimycin administered via 1-hour infusion following the bortezomib dose 2 times per week every 2 weeks out of 3 weeks). Of these 56 patients, all had received multiple prior chemotherapy regimens (median of 4) and 67% had received bone marrow transplants.

In those patients who received tanespimycin across the range of doses tested and a dose of 1.0 or 1.3 mg/m2 of bortezomib, the overall response rate including complete, partial and minimal responses was, as previou
'/>"/>

SOURCE Kosan Biosciences Incorporated Copyright©2007 PR Newswire.

0 GOOD