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ST. DAVIDS - Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories has launched its first cancer drug, the key ingredient of which was found in a piece of clay an employee brought back from a vacation out West in the early 1980s.
The company expects the drug, called Mylotarg, to generate about $40 million in sales in 2001, its first full year in the market.
Dr. John Ryan, Wyeth-Ayerst's senior vice president of clinical research and development, said the significance of the FDA's approval of Mylotarg - the first in a new class of anticancer therapies called "antibody-targeted chemotherapy" - is that it marks the beginning of a new platform the company has developed for zeroing in on, then killing, cancer cells.
Mylotarg was approved by the Food and Drug Administration last month as a treatment for patients with a type of cancer called acute myeloid leukemia or AML, one of four types of leukemia. The FDA approval limited the drug to people age 60 or older who have suffered their first relapse of AML, and are unlikely to tolerate another series of traditional chemotherapy treatments.
Wyeth-Ayerst began shipping the new drug to distributors last week.
AML, characterized by a rapid accumulation of abnormal white blood cells in the blood and bone marrow, is the most common type of acute leukemia in adults. According to the American Cancer Society, 9,700 new cases of AML are diagnosed each year in the United States. About 75 percent of those patients will be over the age of 60. Worldwide, an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 people have AML, which is often quickly fatal if not treated. Even with treatment, only about 20 percent of all AML patients...