CytRx Corporation (NASDAQ: CYTR), a biopharmaceutical company,
today announced favorable preliminary results from its Phase 2 STAR-1
registration clinical trial for tamibarotene in the treatment of acute
promyelocytic leukemia (APL) in patients failing other treatments. The
results were presented in a poster at the 51st Annual Meeting of the
American Society of Hematology (ASH), being held December 5-8, 2009 at
the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana.
“These results demonstrate that tamibarotene warrants additional
evaluation for the management of APL, which supports our work with key
opinion leaders to design a clinical trial to evaluate tamibarotene in
combination with other agents as a first-line treatment for this
cancer,” stated Steven A. Kriegsman, CytRx President and CEO. “A
previously announced dose escalation trial with orally administered
tamibarotene combined with arsenic trioxide injection in patients with
relapsed APL is currently underway.”
CytRx Chief Medical Officer Daniel Levitt, MD, Ph.D., said, “Some APL
patients may choose not to be exposed to all-trans
retinoic acid (ATRA) and anthracycline-based chemotherapy – the
current first-line treatment for APL. ATRA therapy is associated with
several toxicities. The most serious of these is differentiation
syndrome, which occurs in up to one-quarter of patients treated with
ATRA and is a serious and potentially fatal complication. Additionally,
anthracyclines, which are among the most effective anticancer
treatments, can cause heart damage, considerably limiting their
usefulness. Results from the STAR-1 trial indicate that tamibarotene was
well tolerated, which is consistent with other studies, and it is
associated with a relatively low incidence of differentiation syndrome
and has shown no effect on heart function.”