Drug Detail

Information about Retaspimycin hydrochloride

Generic Name	Retaspimycin hydrochloride
IND	IPI-504
Brand Name (US)
Manufacturer	Infinity
Drug Type	Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor
Delivery	Intravenous
Approval Status	Phase 3
Indications
Overall Strategy	KIT Protein Based
Strategy	Destroy KIT
Drug Category	HSP90 inhibitor

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 15, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced that, based on the recommendation of its independent data monitoring committee (IDMC), Infinity has elected to terminate the RING trial, a double-blind, placebo-controlled international Phase 3 registration trial of IPI-504 (retaspimycin hydrochloride) in patients with refractory gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST). See the links under Links and Trial Results.

The IDMC's recommendation yesterday evening to halt the trial was based on an early review of safety data from the first 46 patients enrolled in the study, which showed a higher than anticipated mortality rate among patients enrolled in the treatment arm.
The heat shock chaperone protein (HSP-90) has emerged as a promising target for cancer therapy. Infinity Pharmaceuticals’ IPI-504 is one of many experimental heat shock protein inhibitors vying for a spot in the cancer market. Data from the recently completed Phase I trial of this drug was presented at the 2008 American Society of Clinical Oncology conference (ASCO) in May.
In preclinical work performed with Dr. Jonathan Fletcher’s lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Infinity Pharmaceuticals has demonstrated that IPI-504 kills GIST cancer cells as effectively as Gleevec in vitro (in the test tube). Moreover, when cancer cells have mutations that make them resistant to Gleevec, IPI-504 kills these cells with even greater effectiveness. The more mutated the GIST cells become, the more sensitive they are to IPI-504.
IPI-504 is Infinity’s novel anti-cancer agent that potently and selectively inhibits Hsp90. IPI-504 has broad anti-tumor activity in animal models as a single agent as well as in combination with existing anti-cancer therapeutics.

Research shows that inhibition of Hsp90 forces cancer cells to “commit suicide” through a process of programmed cell death or apoptosis