Glaxo Says Cancer Drug Trials Progressing Rapidly

LONDON (Reuters) - A new anticancer drug that targets two biological switches at once is progressing rapidly in clinical trials, its developer GlaxoSmithKline Plc said on Tuesday.

The so-called dual kinase inhibitor, known by the code 572016, is viewed by industry analysts as among the most promising experimental products in GSK's pipeline and a potential multibillion-dollar seller.

"We are progressing very rapidly along our clinical trials with '016," Tachi Yamada, head of research at Europe's biggest drugmaker told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"Our studies are actually ahead of schedule in our enrolment right now," he added.

Some investors were disappointed last December when GSK said it did not expect to file the once-daily pill for regulatory approval until 2005.

The product, which GSK plans to market initially for breast cancer, blocks two biological switches involved in cancer growth that are inhibited separately by drugs such as AstraZeneca Plc's Iressa and Genentech Inc's Herceptin.

If successful, it would boost GSK's presence significantly in cancer, an area in which the company has traditionally been weak. Clinical data on the drug will be presented at the June 5-8 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Yamada said other drug programmes were also well on-track with several key programmes set to move from phase II to final phase III testing by the middle or the second half of this year.

These included 353162, a follow-on product to Wellbutrin for use in depression and perhaps smoking cessation, and 406381, a second-generation COX-2 inhibitor for pain, he said.

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Recently, GSK has signed up fewer deals with biotechnology companies to license in drugs but Yamada said the Anglo-American group remained on the look-out for product acquisitions.

"We are still just as hungry as everybody else for late-stage assets. It's just that there aren't that many out there for sale and any compound with significant proof of concept is a very expensive proposition," he said.

He declined to comment on GSK's possible interest in Celltech Group Plc's experimental arthritis treatment CDP 870, for which the British biotech firm hopes to sign a partnership deal in the second quarter of 2004.

MeSH Headings: Drugs, Investigational