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Pancreas Cancer News and Archives | |
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For educational purposes only; not to be relied upon. Please read Pancreatica Disclaimer | |
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New Report From Decision Resources Evaluates Emerging Therapies to Treat Pancreatic Cancer WALTHAM, Mass., January 23, 2002 Decision Resources, Inc., announces the publication of Pancreatic Cancer, a new study that evaluates the current status of, and future prospects for, therapies to treat this highly virulent cancer. Pancreatic cancer (PC) is a biologically complex disease that is highly resistant to treatment. For more than 80% of patients with pancreatic cancer, no effective treatment exists, and few patients with advanced stage disease are alive after one year. Therefore, any well-tolerated, efficacious therapy would encounter few obstacles on its way to market penetration. Experts contacted by Decision Resources consider therapeutic vaccines and epidermal growth factor (EGF) inhibitors, particularly receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors, to be the most promising approaches now under investigation. Novel Agents Spur Market Growth Therapeutic vaccines and EGF inhibitors are being evaluated in Phase III trials. We believe that these trials will show that these agents improve survival rates and carry very little toxicity, and we thus anticipate that they will, upon approval, rapidly become standard therapy for PC. Vaccines will be used in almost all PC patients, thus increasing the number of patients receiving treatment. Epidermal Growth Factor Inhibitors Experts interviewed for this report consider EGF inhibitors to be one of the more promising approaches in current PC research. Among the most promising epidermal growth factor inhibitors are trastuzumab (Genentech/Roche's Herceptin) and cetuximab (ImClone Systems/Bristol-Myers Squibb/Merck KGaA's Erbitux). Thought leaders interviewed for this study believe that therapeutic vaccines and epidermal growth factor inhibitors are likely to be efficacious agents with very few side effects. Therapeutic Vaccines Of the therapeutic vaccines in development, the most promising are antigastrin 17 (Aphton/Aventis's Gastroimmune) and Virulizin (from Lorus Therapeutics). Because of its low toxicity, we anticipate that therapeutic vaccines would be used in almost all PC patients, in addition to standard therapy. We also expect that patients ineligible for gemcitabine therapy because of a low performance status would be offered immunotherapy. Pancreatic Cancer offers invaluable market intelligence to companies that are developing drugs to treat this disease. This study is part of Onkos, one of six Pharmacor services available from Decision Resources that evaluate the commercial potential of drugs in research and development. Decision Resources, Inc., is a world leader in research publications, advisory services, and consulting designed to help clients shape strategy, allocate resources, and master their chosen markets. Founded as a subsidiary of Arthur D. Little, Inc., the company has provided strategic information services for 30 years, assessing international pharmaceutical and health care industry trends. Visit Decision Resources at www.dresources.com.
Press Release SOURCE: Decision Resources, Inc.
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