Novogen drug results released at ASCO meeting

Novogen subsidiary Marshall Edwards' anti-cancer drug phenoxodiol has featured at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago this week, with Yale researchers presenting data demonstrating that the compound is added to low levels of standard chemotherapy agent cisplatin, the size of human ovarian cancer tumours in animal models by up to 75 per cent.

"Our research indicates that the addition of phenoxodiol may significantly reduce the amount of chemotherapy necessary to induce tumour shrinkage and cancer cell death," said Assoc Prof Gil Mor, from the Yale University School of Medicine. "From this data, it appears that phenoxodiol restores the ability of a cancer cell to be killed with low doses of chemotherapy. If that holds true in patients, this is very good news."

According to Novogen's managing director Dr Christopher Naughton, the results widen the opportunities for the anti-cancer drug even further. Currently the drug is undergoing Phase II clinical trials in the US and Australia for use as a monotherapy treatment for ovarian cancer (at Yale), prostate cancer and squamous cell carcinoma.

"Here we've got a relatively safe drug adding sensitivity to chemotherapy allowing use [of chemotherapeutics] in very small doses," Naughton said.

Naughton said it appeared that phenoxodiol worked by regulating signal transduction pathways in cancer cells, switching off a variety of enzyme systems inappropriately activated in cancer cells, and allowing apoptosis to be initiated. It doesn't appear to have any effects on non-cancer cells.

The company expects to have results from the ovarian cancer Phase II trial, underway at Yale University, as well as the prostate cancer trial, which is being performed in Australia, by the end of the year, with more results following next year.

The company hopes that good results on the trials will lead to early approval by the US Food and Drug Administration for treatment of late-stage cancer patients.

"We're quietly confident that we have something very important here," said Naughton.

Novogen, which is listed on both the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX: NRT) and Nasdaq (NASDAQ: NVGN), was trading five per cent higher locally at $AUD4.40 at the time of writing.