( es AKT and a number of other keysignal...)Keryx Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. Announces Positive Phase I and Phase,II Data on KRX-0401 in Patients with Relapsed/Refractory Multiple,Myeloma and Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia,Health

High levels of activated Akt (pAkt) are seen frequently in many types of cancer and have been correlated with poor prognosis in patients with soft- tissue sarcoma, gastric, hepatocellular, endometrial, prostate, renal cell, head and neck cancers and hematological malignancies, as well as glioblastoma. The majority of tumors expressing high levels of pAkt were high-grade, advanced stage or had other features associated with poor prognosis. High pAkt is often seen in tumors that are resistant to conventional cancer treatments, including radiotherapy, chemotherapy, endocrine therapy, and especially therapy with some of the newer biologicals.

The effects of perifosine on Akt are of particular interest because of 1) the importance of this pathway in the development of most cancers; 2) the evidence that it is often activated in tumors that are resistant to other forms of anticancer therapy; and 3) and the difficulty encountered thus far in the discovery of drugs that will inhibit this pathway without causing excessive toxicity. It is plausible that perifosine may be useful in combination to reduce the resistance to other cancer treatments.

To date, over 1,500 patients have been treated with perifosine in trials conducted both in the United States and Europe. Its safety profile is distinctly different from that of most cytotoxic agents. It does not appear to cause myelosuppression (depression of the immune system that may lead to life threatening infections), thrombocytopenia (a decrease in platelets that may result in bleeding), skin rash, flu-like symptoms or alopecia (hair loss); all of these toxicities occur frequently with many of the currently available treatments for cancer. The main side effects of perifosine are nausea, vomiting,
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