Alfacell's ONCONASE : Potential as Radiation Sensitizer for Lung Cancer Treatment

April 14, 2008 - Alfacell Corporation (NASDAQ:ACEL) announced that Dr. Intae Lee with the University of Pennsylvania has reported that Alfacell's ONCONASE (ranpirnase) could be a promising radiation sensitizer for lung cancer treatment. Dr. Lee presented the pre-clinical in vivo and in vitro data in a poster at the 2008 American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting being held April 12 - 16 in San Diego.

In the poster titled "The inhibition of radiation repair by ranpirnase +/- I-buthionine sulfoximide on lung cancer," Dr. Lee provided pre-clinical evidence that ONCONASE +/- I-buthionine sulfoximide significantly increased the radiation-induced growth delay of lung tumors in vivo without increases in skin reaction, compared to radiation alone. Additionally, in vivo and in vitro data presented indicated that ONCONASE significantly increased apoptosis (programmed cell death) in several human non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cell lines (A549, NCI-H1975 and HOP-62). Dr. Lee and his team of researchers also showed that the radiation repair mechanisms known as sub-lethal damage repair (SLDR) and potentially lethal damage repair (PLDR), which lead to radiation resistance in tumors, were significantly inhibited by ONCONASE in vitro... Alfacell's Press Release -