Corixa announces lung cancer vaccine,stock price rises
By JENNY JOHNSON Staff Reporter
The price of a share of Corixa Corp. stock hit a 52-week high Monday following the company's announcement of a clinical study of its lung cancer vaccine.
The phase I clinical testing of an investigational vaccine for patients with non-small-cell lung cancer will be conducted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this year.
Corixa, a biotech company with operations in Seattle, Hamilton and San Francisco, received approval of another cancer drug in June. The potential for a second cancer-fighting drug to receive approval in the U.S. improved the outlook of Corixa's stock, analysts said Monday.
Stock prices have slipped since 2000, when they were traded for as high as $72. Emerging from a lackluster performance in 2001 and 2002, the company's stock has risen 30 percent since June, and Monday's high peaked at $9.89, just above the company's 52-week high.
The Seattle-based biotech company employs about 100 people at its Hamilton research and manufacturing plant and has plans for expansion of the Hamilton facility.
The vaccine is designed to trigger patient immune responses against an antigen expressed by certain lung cancer cells, and if successful, would be used to prevent disease recurrence in patients following prior treatment. The vaccine contains recombinant plasmid DNA and another agent - the combination of which may achieve a more substantial immune response to the antigen than either component alone, according to Corixa.
This is the third phase I trial the company has launched this year, according to Corixa chairman and chief executive officer Steven Gillis. It will enroll cancer patients in the study who have undergone surgical resection of their primary cancer within 12 months prior to the study and have had no other treatment for their cancer and have no evidence of residual or recurrent disease prior to enrollment.
Globally, non-small-cell lung cancer is the most common type of lung cancer, accounting for almost 80 percent of lung cancers, according to the American Cancer Society. It affects more than 1 million people each year and is often characterized by a poor survival rate.
A new Corixa treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma approved for sale in the U.S. this summer was recently shown to have a high success rate when used as a two-part treatment with chemotherapy. The first fully published study of a combination treatment involving chemotherapy and radio immunotherapy in the first-line treatment of the disease was published this month in Journal of the American Society of Hematology.
Corixa's Bexxar was chosen as the radio immunotherapy for the phase II study by the Southwest Oncology Group, a cooperative group funded by the National Cancer Institute. The treatment produced an overall response rate of 90 percent and a two-year overall survival rate of 97 percent.
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