Advanced Melanoma Successfully Treated with Antisense Therapy

91st annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research

For the first time, an antisense therapy has been successful in treating a solid tumour in humans. Austrian investigators used a combination of an antisense drug G3139 and dacarbazine (regular chemotherapy) and achieved a 43% response rate in the phase II trial of 17 patients with stage IV melanoma who failed to respond to all standard treatment. The mean survival rate of these patients increased from the usual 5-9 months. One of the patients experienced complete remission. G3139 acts by turning off Bcl-2 gene expression, which has been implicated in chemotherapy resistance. Side effects of this therapy are minor and include transient fever, flushing and rash. A phase III multicenter, international trial with at least 270 patients is sponsored by Genta Inc. (developer of G3139) and is almost ready to begin.