Astex Pharmaceuticals Announces SGI-110 Results From Phase 1/2 MDS

DUBLIN, Calif., Nov. 20, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Astex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

, a pharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery and development of novel small molecule therapeutics, announced that results from the dose escalation part of a randomized Phase 1/2 first-in-human clinical trial of subcutaneous SGI-110, a novel hypomethylating agent, in patients with relapsed/refractory intermediate or high-risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) or acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) will be presented during the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia on Monday, December 10, 2012 at 11:45 am ET. The oral presentation will be made by Hagop M. Kantarjian, MD, professor and department chair, department of leukemia, cancer medicine division, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX. The accepted abstract is available on the ASH website at: https://ash.confex.com/ash/2012/webprogram/Paper49626.html The dose escalation part of the study demonstrated that SGI-110 is well tolerated at doses higher than the biologically effective dose (BED); subcutaneous (SQ) administration achieved efficient conversion to decitabine resulting in an improved pharmacokinetic (PK) profile over intravenous (IV) Dacogen formulation; and clinical responses were observed in this heavily pretreated population which seem to correlate with the extent of LINE-1 hypomethylation.   "Following the preliminary presentation at AACR, this is