Patient enrollment complete for lung cancer treatment trial

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. Drug maker OXiGENE has finished enrolling patients for a mid-stage clinical trial of a lung cancer treatment, the company said Wednesday.

OXiGENE announced that it had enrolled 60 patients in “FALCON,” a phase 2 trial of the drug Zybrestat, a treatment for non-small cell lung cancer. The trial comprises two arms, a study arm with patients taking Zybrestat with Genentech’s Avastin (bevacizumab) and chemotherapy, and a control arm with patients taking Avastin and chemotherapy alone. OXiGENE said some preliminary results from the trial presented at the recent meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology have indicated that the drug is safe and effective.

“We look forward to presenting a more complete analysis of the FALCON trial later in 2010 at a scientific meeting,” OXiGENE CEO Peter Langecker said. “If the encouraging positive trends in terms of progression-free survival and overall survival that we presented at ASCO are maintained, they will underscore Zybrestat’s utility in non-small cell lung cancer and potentially pave the way toward embarking upon a registration pathway.”