New Approach to Treating Anthrax Significantly Improves Survival Rates in Pivotal Effica...(hrax targets anthraxtoxins after they ar...),Health

"These results show that ABthrax was highly effective as a treatment for anthrax in both rabbits and monkeys, and acted quickly to provide a significant survival benefit to animals showing clinical symptoms caused by exposure to massively lethal aerosolized doses of anthrax spores," said David C. Stump, M.D., Executive Vice President, Research and Development, HGS. "The new data are consistent with the results of previous studies in multiple animal models, which demonstrated that a single dose of ABthrax given prophylactically provided up to 100% protection against death."

HGS said that it has met all milestones to date under the Company's contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and is on track to deliver ABthrax to the Strategic National Stockpile beginning in 2008.

"We have demonstrated the efficacy of ABthrax in multiple therapeutic and prophylactic animal models of inhalational anthrax," said James H. Davis, Ph.D., J.D., Executive Vice President and General Counsel, HGS. "We have demonstrated that it was generally safe and well tolerated in two clinical trials to date in healthy adults. We have manufactured conformance lots of ABthrax and are currently producing ABthrax for delivery to the Stockpile. We have more work to do, but our interactions with HHS, FDA and CDC continue to be positive, and the ABthrax program is progressing well."

Research Findings

In one of the animal studies, three groups of monkeys were exposed by inhalation to anthrax spores and treated with either ABthrax or placebo after they showed clinical signs of anthrax disease. After 28 days, the study found that:
-- 64.3 percent of monkeys that received
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