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Positive clinical data for new prostate cancer treatment

Positive clinical data for new prostate cancer treatment

Helsingborg, Sweden March 21st 2011 – LIDDS new local treatment of prostate cancer shows a clear local antiandrogen response and is well tolerated. The Swedish pharmaceutical company presented interim data from its phase IIa trial at the 26th Annual Congress of the European Association of Urology (EAU) in Vienna this weekend.

LIDDS has gained promising data from its Phase IIa study for treatment of localized prostate cancer.  LIDDS´ novel product Liproca® Depot is an injectable modified release product that successfully has been developed for local antiandrogen therapy of prostate cancer. The company presents the data at the 26th Annual Congress of the European Association of Urology (EAU) in Vienna. The novel product has demonstrated effect on an established cancer biomarker and has a very low frequency of antiandrogen related side-effects. This is accomplished by delivering sufficiently high drug concentrations in the tumor areas, within the prostate gland, during several months, following one single injection of Liproca® Depot, while avoiding high systemic drug concentration and thus avoiding the antiandrogen related side-effects.  

Hans Lennernäs, professor in biopharmaceutics at Uppsala University and chief scientific advisor to LIDDS and one of the inventors says, “It is obvious that there is a place for novel treatments of this localized stage of the prostate cancer disease. Focal drug therapy with Liproca® Depot is expected to become an important treatment tool to be used in these patients as it delivers both high degree of inhibition of cancer growth, low frequency of side-effects and high level of quality of life”

Many of today´s treatment alternatives are far from optimal as they are relatively costly and bring about many severe side-effects such as impotence, weight gain, muscle strength, osteoporosis and metabolic changes as increased risk of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Several of these side-effects are caused by the high levels of active drug in the blood.  Liproca® Depot is meeting this unmet need, as none of these unacceptable side-effects are expected by a local treatment in the prostate tissue, as the systemic drug concentration will be low.

The interim data from the ongoing phase IIa study in patients with prostate cancer confirms the positive phase I data  as well as data from non-clinical studies which strongly indicate that Liproca® Depot is a product with high positive benefit/ risk ratio. The interim data from the phase IIa trial also confirms that there is a clear local antiandrogen response and that the treatment is well tolerated.

The Swedish MPA supports further clinical development after reviewing the preliminary results from this phase IIa trial.

For more details on the data please also see:

http://www.uroweb.org/events/abstracts-online/?id=108&AID=33306

 

About prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is a hormone-dependent disease that is dependent on endogenous androgens (testosterone and dihydrotestosterone) to advance and proliferate. In developed countries, prostate cancer is the second most frequently diagnosed cancer and the third most common cause of death of cancer in men (although varying from country to country). Estimates in autopsy studies indicate that 50 % of men older than 50 years of age have prostate cancer. Clinically, prostate cancer is diagnosed as local or advanced, and treatments range from active surveillance to radical local treatment or androgen-deprivation treatment. More than 90 percent of all prostate cancers are discovered in the local and regional stage. In Europe and North America about 450 000 new cases are diagnosed annually and many of them are expected to be possible candidates for treatment with Liproca® Depot.

Contact information

Professor Hans Lennernäs, Dept. of Pharmacy, Uppsala University and CSO, LIDDS AB 
Tel: +46 705 73 97 23

Lars Åke Malmsten, Ph.D., CEO, LIDDS AB
Tel: +46 708 48 75 75

About LIDDS

LIDDS AB is a Swedish life science company developing innovative pharmaceutical products, based on medical need and its proprietary parenteral drug delivery technology. The primary aim is to satisfy the unmet needs for improved treatment of prostate cancer, benign prostate hyperplasia and other diseases of the prostate. For more info visit www.liddspharma.com

Liproca® Depot was judged by Thomson Reuters as one of the five most promising products entering phase II trials in 2009.

LIDDS AB is a project company of the life science incubator P.U.L.S. (www.pulsinvest.se)