Monday, May 25, 2009

NovImmune to enter Phase-II with NI-0401 (Another CD3 targeted drug)

It looks like NovImmune (a Swiss company) will start phase-II trials of NI-0401, a CD3 targeted drug "this quarter" and hope to have results in 2011 "at the earliest". The trial is expected to be multi-site and have between 100 and 200 patients enrolled, making it pretty big for a phase-II. The drug has already completed a phase-I clinical trial for Crohn's disease, another diseases where the immune system attacks it's own body. I can't find any record of a phase-I trial for this drug in type-1 diabetes, so I assume they are using their safety data from the Crohn's testing to justify a phase-II trial for type-1 without a separate phase-I.

News article is here:
http://www.bioworld.com/servlet/com.accumedia.web.Dispatcher?next=bioWorldHeadlines_article&forceid=50851

If treatments targeting CD3 sound familiar, that is not surprising. There are two other CD3 targeted treatments already in human trials. ToleRx's Otelixizumab (in phase-III trials now), and MacroGenics's Teplizumab (in phase-II trials now).

More information on ToleRx (Otelixizumab previously TRX4) :
http://cureresearch4type1diabetes.blogspot.com/search/label/Otelixizumab
http://joshualevy.pbworks.com/DiabetesCureReadyForHumanTrials#TRX4alsoknownasChAglyCD3byToleRx

More information on MacroGenics (Teplizumab):
http://joshualevy.pbworks.com/DiabetesCureReadyForHumanTrials#MacroGenics

Joshua Levy

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