Authored by James Sheppard
The US biotech ARIAD Pharmaceuticals has announced data from its ongoing phase I trial for ponatinib. The data announced at ASCO showed long term durability data in patients heavily pre-treated with resistant or intolerant chronic myeloid leukaemia.
Ponatinib was discovered at ARIAD’s laboratories and is an investigational BCR-ABL inhibitor. Ponatinib was designed using ARIAD’s computational and structure-based drug design platform to inhibit the activity of BCR-ABL with high potency and broad specificity.
The data shows that ponatinib, also known as Iclusig, continues to provide deep, durable clinical response in chronic phase CML-patients. The phase I trial includes 81 patients where 61% of the patients had failed on at least 3 previous therapies. Dr Frank Haluska, Chief Medical Officer at ARIAD, stated ‘In addition to ponatinib achieving robust patient responses, in the refractory CML population responses are deepening over time.’
Professor Jorge Cortes, University of Texas, added ‘The response rates observed in this study confirm substantial and durable clinical activity and suggest that ponatinib may overcome BCR-ABL mutation-based resistance, as well as resistance when no mutations are detectable.’ The news comes a great time for ARIAD as they look to push forward with their oncology pipeline.
