Several studies showed that all responses to Erbitux are in this group of patients.
"I think Erbitux is more of a treatment than we've given it credit for, " Venook says.
But now Erbitux appears to have lost the advantage of being first to market.
ImClone's Erbitux blocked the EGF receptor in a slightly different way, using an injectable monoclonal antibody.
Fakhrai hopes to show that Lucanix increases survival far longer than drugs like Avastin and Erbitux.
ImClone's only current drug, Erbitux, belongs largely to its marketing partners, Bristol-Myers Squibb and German Merck.
Bristol-Myers' also holds rights to any Erbitux-related compounds, including an improved Erbitux that it is being developed.
Even with all that's happened, there is still way of knowing whether Erbitux will succeed or fail.
Despite the nearly two year delay, Bristol-Myers executives still believe Erbitux can become a very big seller.
Campaigners branded the NICE decision ironic, given that British scientists led the way in Erbitux clinical trials.
The alternative was to develop a protein-based drug, like Erbitux, but the drug would have to be injected.
For a while, it was as if a new breakthrough cancer drug hit every year: Gleevec, Erbitux, Avastin.
So investors with no interest in sharing in Erbitux might be inclined to own part of ImClone's pipeline.
Few gene-testing studies yield the sort of clear-cut results seen in the case of kras, Erbitux and Vectibix.
They did gene testing on tumors from 113 colon patients who had previously taken either Erbitux or Vectibix.
Cowen analyst Eric Schmidt thinks that the remaining royalty stream from Erbitux would be attractive to any buyer.
Big selling cancer drugs like Rituxan, Avastin and Erbitux are antibodies against signaling molecules that spur tumor growth.
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The alternative was to develop a protein-based drug, like Erbitux, but then patients would have to be injected.
Amgen developed a copycat to Erbitux, called Vectibix, and priced it significantly lower.
In September, ImClone Chief Executive Sam Waksal was telling investors that Erbitux would be the biggest oncology drug ever.
Back at Memorial Sloan Kettering, Saltz believes it is premature to start giving Erbitux instead of Avastin to patients.
But Erbitux was a good drug, and Johnson quietly helped prove its worth.
This limited success will probably be enough to get Erbitux approved, given the FDA's new relaxed stance toward cancer drugs.
AstraZeneca's Iressa--which is approved for lung cancer and being tested in colon tumors--is a pill, while Erbitux must be injected.
This comes on top of less-than-positive results concerning a late-stage study of Erbitux, ImClone's multi-billion colorectal drug, combined with chemotherapy.
Mooney estimates that doing new clinical trials could delay Erbitux's approval by as much as two and a half years.
When combined with Camptosar, Erbitux helps shrink tumors in about 23% of these patients for a median of four months.
He predicts that the finding could expand the use of Erbitux in patients who do not have a kras mutation.
When ImClone's Erbitux, OSI's Tarceva and Astra's Iressa were unveiled, they were hailed as a new kind of cancer drug.
Happily, the cancer drug Erbitux had a curative effect on him, as did the methods of Dr. Everett Nokes.
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