Quest PharmaTech Inc. (Quest), a pharmaceutical company developing and commercializing products for the treatment of cancer, announced that it has received notice of allowance for US Patent Application 10/831,886 entitled: "Combination Therapy for Treating Disease". The Patent covers the use of monoclonal antibodies capable of targeting tumour antigens CA 125, MUC1, CA 19.9, TAG-72 and prostate specific antigen, which are presented in ovary, breast, lung, pancreas, stomach and prostate cancers, respectively, in combination with a chemotherapeutic drug to treat cancer.

The company's technology platform was based on the observation that its lead product, Oregovomab, when used as mono-immunotherapy during watchful waiting period in ovarian cancer patients was unable to meet progression free survival endpoint. However, when Oregovomab was administered in combination with front-line carboplatin-paclitaxel, the combination resulted in a more vigorous immune response, which in turn consistently correlated with favourable clinical outcome in a 40 patient clinical trial. An enhanced immune response was also observed with anti-MUC1 antibody and another chemotherapeutic agent, gemcitabine, in a pancreatic cancer animal model. In addition to the use of chemotherapeutic agents to enhance immune response, Quest has successfully used photosensitizer, SL052 as well as a TLR3 agonist, Ampligen in preclinical settings.

The allowance of the Patent by the US Patent Office provides broad coverage to Quest's Combination Therapy Technology Platform, complementing the corresponding patents already issued in Europe and Australia. In addition, Quest has thirteen issued patents and five pending patent applications in the US to protect various aspects of Quest's technology.

The company is in the process of translating its valuable intellectual property into commercial success by conducting three carefully planned proof-of-concept clinical trials to establish the superiority of the combinatorial immunotherapy either with front-line chemotherapy consisting of carboplatin/paclitaxel in ovarian cancer or gemcitabine in pancreatic cancer or with the addition of a TLR3 agonist, Ampligen. The company hopes that successful results from these studies will lead to the design of a definitive product registration study.

Quest is a publicly traded, Alberta-based biotechnology company committed to the development and commercialization of oncology product candidates.