Company Press Release
Boston Life Sciences Announces Interim Results
For Its Phase II Trial of Parkinson's Disease
Diagnostic Agent Altropane
BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 26, 1999--Boston Life Sciences Inc.
(Nasdaq:BLSI - news) announced that the
company had completed its interim analysis of the Phase II trial of
Altropane®, its radioimaging agent for the early
diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease. The trial was designed to demonstrate
that subjects with early and/or mild Parkinson's
Disease could be readily differentiated from normal subjects based on an
Altropane brain scan. This trial was different
from the company's previously reported successful physician's sponsored
Phase II trial in that PD subjects in the current
trial had clinically mild disease as compared to the more advanced
disease evaluated in the previous trial. The PD
subjects entered into the current trial consequently resembled quite
closely the patient population that potentially would be
candidates for Altropane scanning if and when the agent became
commercially available, the company said.
The interim results from about one half the total number of enrolled
subjects indicate that subjects with early or mild PD
can be reliably and easily differentiated from normal subjects based on
the Altropane scan results. Normal subjects had a
mean striatal binding potential of 1.07 +/- 0.17 vs. 0.44 +/- 0.19 for
patients with early/mild PD (p less than 0.00007). The
highest bidding potential for a PD subject (0.66) was still well below
the lowest binding potential seen in the normal
subjects (0.9). Qualitative assessment of the scans revealed moderate to
marked decrease in at least one quadrant of the
striatium in the brain of PD subjects compared to the normal subjects.
``We are gratified but frankly not surprised by these preliminary
excellent results of the interim Phase II analysis,'' stated
Marc E. Lanser, M.D., chief scientific officer of BLSI. ``We had
expected, based on the published studies of academic
groups, that Altropane would be able to reliably differentiate subjects
with mild PD from normal subjects. ''Having
confirmed our expectations with these results, we can now proceed with
added confidence to our Phase III study. The
Phase III trial has been designed to test the ability of Altropane to
discriminate between early Parkinson's syndromes and
other movement disorders, a distinction which often poses diagnostic
problems for practicing clinicians,`` added Dr.
Lanser.
--
Judith Richards, London, Ontario, Canada
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