CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - (Business Wire) ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARIA) today announced that the Company and collaborating investigators from five major oncology research centers in the United States will present data from a Phase 1 clinical trial of ARIAD’s investigational, multi-targeted kinase inhibitor and pan-BCR-ABL inhibitor, AP24534, at the 51st Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) being held in New Orleans, Louisiana, December 5-8, 2009. The Phase 1 clinical proof-of-concept data on AP24534 in patients with resistant and refractory chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) will be presented by Jorge Cortes, M.D., Professor and Deputy Chair, Department of Leukemia at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. ARIAD announced preliminary trial results on AP24534 earlier this year, outlining initial clinical evidence of hematologic, cytogenetic and molecular responses and anti-cancer activity of AP24534 in heavily pretreated patients with resistant and refractory CML and Philadelphia-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia, including those with the T315I mutant variant of the target protein, BCR-ABL.
In addition to M.D. Anderson, other clinical research sites participating in this study of AP24534 include the Oregon Health and Science University, the University of California at San Francisco, Sarah Cannon Research Institute and the University of Michigan Medical School.
The schedule and meeting place for the session, together with the abstract information, are listed below:
ARIAD also will hold a conference call at 8:30 a.m. (ET) on Tuesday, December 8, 2009 to discuss these data presented at ASH. ARIAD senior management and Hagop M. Kantarjian, M.D., Chairman and Professor, Department of Leukemia, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center will review and discuss the findings from this Phase 1 trial of AP24534. The call can be accessed by dialing 866-202-4683 (domestic) or 617-213-8846 (international) five minutes prior to the start time and providing the pass code 89813235. A replay of the call will be available on the ARIAD website approximately two hours after completion of the call and will be archived for three weeks.
About ARIAD
ARIAD’s vision is to transform the lives of cancer patients with breakthrough medicines. The Company’s mission is to discover, develop and commercialize small-molecule drugs to treat cancer in patients with the greatest and most urgent unmet medical need – aggressive cancers where current therapies are inadequate. ARIAD’s lead product candidate, ridaforolimus, is an investigational mTOR inhibitor in Phase 3 clinical development in patients with advanced sarcomas and is being developed in collaboration with Merck & Co., Inc. ARIAD’s second product candidate, AP24534, is an investigational multi-targeted kinase inhibitor in Phase 1 clinical development in patients with hematological cancers. ARIAD has an exclusive license to pioneering technology and patents related to certain NF-κB cell-signaling activity, which may be useful in treating certain diseases. For additional information about the Company, please visit http://www.ariad.com.
ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Maria E. Cantor, 617-621-2208
