Yes, that was an abstract that was presented by my colleague John Mascarenhas. AVID200 is basically a trap TGF-beta-1. We did some preclinical work to show that the use of AVID200, at least in the laboratory led to the reversal of mesenchymal stromal cell proliferation, and also collagen deposition, and also had an effect on hematopoietic progenitor cells that were obtained from patients with myelofibrosis, leading to it in a subset of patients leading to increased number of wild type hematopoietic colonies, ex-vivo, and an increase in the number of wild type colonies...
Yes, that was an abstract that was presented by my colleague John Mascarenhas. AVID200 is basically a trap TGF-beta-1. We did some preclinical work to show that the use of AVID200, at least in the laboratory led to the reversal of mesenchymal stromal cell proliferation, and also collagen deposition, and also had an effect on hematopoietic progenitor cells that were obtained from patients with myelofibrosis, leading to it in a subset of patients leading to increased number of wild type hematopoietic colonies, ex-vivo, and an increase in the number of wild type colonies.
That was the preclinical work that went into the preclinical package for this Phase I trial. There were 22 patients that were treated. Basically there were spleen responses and also symptom responses, but the most profound effect was really on increased numbers of platelets and normalization of platelets. And we really haven’t had a drug that’s been available to increase platelet numbers in patients with myelofibrosis.
Our hope is basically that this drug is going to be helpful in those patients who have thrombocytopenia either alone or in combination with a JAK2 inhibitor. The marrows that were done on the patients in the AVID200 trial were done basically in those patients after six months of treatment. And to our surprise, there wasn’t any reversal of marrow fibrosis. And I think that’s really a consequence of the dynamic deposition of collagen and reticulin fibrosis during the phase of patients … during myelofibrosis and that perhaps the marrows were done for a limited time of administration of the drug.
Two patients continue on this trial and we’ve had clinical improvements and also stable disease in the majority of patients that were treated in very limited, virtually no toxicity. This drug, I think has promise, especially its effects on platelet production, accelerated platelet production is most impressive.