Axelar AB, a Swedish biotechnology company developing insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) receptor inhibitors for treatment of cancer and other diseases, announces that the first submitted medical article on the ongoing phase I/II cancer study with AXL1717 has been published in Acta Oncologica.

The article, including clinical data from a limited group of AXL1717-treated patients, by doctors. Ekman, Bergqvist, Frodin and colleagues, was recently published in Acta Oncologica, Early Online 1-7, 2010. The publication describes four heavily pretreated patients with progressive and advanced squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) without any remaining therapeutic options. The patients were treated with AXL1717 for notably long time periods, and in addition to reporting that the drug was well tolerated the authors conclude that during: "more than seven months of AXL1717 treatment as third or fourth line treatment, the reported patients did not develop any additional metastases."

"We are pleased to report the first clinical experience in a peer-reviewed publication. These patients, with squamous NSCLC with tumor progression at baseline, represent a selected subgroup but lack a control group. We are encouraged by the results especially since the data was collected in a phase I setting with the primary objectives to establish the tolerability and pharmacokinetics of AXL1717. Squamous NSCLC is relatively unresponsive to regular cytotoxic chemotherapy but the cells of this cancer have been shown to display a high density of the IGF-1 receptor, the therapeutic target for AXL1717", says Johan Harmenberg, CEO Axelar AB.