Early Trials Of AbbVie Leukemia Drug Earn Positive Reviews
PHOTO/rick saia
AbbVie's Worcester research facility employs roughly 700 people.
A researcher said AbbVie’s experimental drug for leukemia strongly reduced signs of the disease in 84 percent of patients.
The early-stage trial was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a once-daily pill, ABT-199, in controlling or eliminating signs of the slowly progressing blood cancer.
The 67 patients enrolled in the trial had, on average, failed to benefit from four previous treatments, according to Dr. John Seymour, a research with the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center in Melbourne, Australia. The drug is being developed in a partnership between Roche Holding AG and AbbVie, a Chicago-based company with a research and development facility in Worcester.
Some 23 percent of the patients experienced complete remissions with the drug, Seymour said. Nearly three-quarters of the patients remained on the drug and were well nearly a year after beginning treatment.
Additional trials of ABT-199 are in the works.
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