A specialist California-based pharmaceutical firm announced yesterday that it was entering phase two clinical trials for a new platinum-based lung cancer treatment.

Oncology specialists Poniard Pharmaceuticals have successfully enrolled 75 patients in a trial for its new drug treatment for the aggressive small cell lung cancer (SCLC).

The product called Picoplatin is an intravenous platinum-based chemotherapy drug that has been designed to overcome the problems normally associated with resistance in chemotherapy regimes using platinum compounds.

Picoplatin is Poniard's leading candidate for a treatment for SCLC, which is the most deadly and aggressive form of lung cancer accounting for roughly 20 per cent of all cases presented to US and European doctors.

Poniard chief medical officer Alan Glassberg said: "New agents are needed that are active in SCLC and that can overcome the drug resistance associated with currently available platinum compounds."

Best estimates from the International Agency for Research on Cancer suggest that there were 383,900 cases of lung cancer in Europe during 2004, and 174,500 cases in the United States so far this year.

The standard treatment for lung cancers is combination chemotherapy using compounds containing platinum. Unfortunately, these treatments are often unsuccessful due to acquired or intrinsic drug resistance.


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