On October 12th, the company announced Genasense, combined with Bristol Meyers' (BMY) drug Platinol, worked very well without additional side effects in a mouse model of human stomach cancer. Genasense is an antisense therapy the company believes will help boost the effects of most anti-cancer therapies currently on the market. Genasense has both fast track and orphan drug status from the FDA and is in Phase III trials for malignant melanoma, multiple myeloma, and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. It is in Phase II or Phase I/II studies for several other indications.

Our main concern with Genta is its low cash reserves (less than 12 months reserves at current burn rates). However, the company will begin marketing Ganite, a gallium nitrate product to treat cancer-related hypercalcemia (bone loss) early next year so that should help somewhat. Recent events show the window for biotech equity financing is also re-opening, so a secondary is possible

On October 8th, Genta issued a press release covering two recently released papers concerning its "decoy aptemer" technology. The papers describe Genta substances that intervene in the body's production of proteins used to switch genes on or off. Theoretically, accurately interfering with the ability of specific proteins to switch specific genes on or off could be a valuable anti-cancer tool.

Genta researchers are presenting Phase II data on Genasense applied to Acute Myeloid Leukemia at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) conference October 29th through November 4th. They are also presenting Phase II Genasense data on Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia at the American Society of Hemotology (ASH) conference December 7th - 11th.

They are also presented on October 22nd at the Anti-cancer Drug and Development Summit. The presentation, currently scheduled for 11:15am, looks to be an overview of Genasense's abilities as a cancer fighting drug according to the abstract we've discovered. We mention this because it is possible some news of the late-October and early December trial data may leak during the presentations.

(One or more NIBM staff members or research partners owns a long position in this stock. For more details on our industry-best disclosure policy, visit the "Disclosures" section of the BiotechMonthly.com web site.)