Abstract: Increasing efforts have recently been spent onto the accomplishment of oral colon targeting. Indeed, this has been related to a number of local as well as systemic highly interesting applications, such as a more effective and tolerable therapy of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), the pharmacological prevention of colorectal adenocarcinoma, and a possible improvement in the oral bioavailability of peptide and protein drugs. For the purpose of colon targeting, a variety of delivery technologies have been described, which rely on typical variation patterns shown by selected physiological parameters throughout the gastrointestinal tract. In particular, this article is focused on time-based formulation approaches that exploit the relative consistency in the small intestinal transit time (SITT) of dosage forms. ... Read more

Epidermal growth factor (EGF) was shown effective in treating colon ulcers in a small human trial. The trial was conducted at the Leicester Royal Infirmary, UK. Their results were recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine (Sinha, A. et al., New England Journal of Medicine 349:395-397, Jul. 24, 2003). About 800,000 people in North America suffer from ulcers of colon.

Twenty four patients with ulcerative colitis were randomly and equally divided into EGF-treated and placebo-treated groups. Two weeks into the treatment, 10 out of 12 patients treated with EGF had gone into remission, the end point of the trial. ... Read more

On May 19, 2003, Genentech announced that its anti-cancer drug Avastin “markedly” improved overall survival when combined with standard chemotherapy in a phase III clinical trial of colon cancer patients. Details of the trial were made available at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) Annual Conference held in Chicago in early June (see below), though the few tidbits that were released on May 19 have proven to be especially juicy. Genentech stock was up 45% or an increase of $8.7 billion in market value following the news. The excitement lived on. In the ensuing days, Genentech stock was up ... Read more