SciClone Halts Study of Pancreatic Cancer Treatment

Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) - SciClone Pharmaceuticals Inc. said it has discontinued a abstraction of its beginning biologic for pancreatic blight afterwards a advocacy by a assurance analysis committee. The shares fell as abundant as 24 percent.

The drug, accepted as RP101, is a nucleoside analog that was actuality activated for patients with late-stage blight of the pancreas, the aggregation said in a account today. The accommodation to stop the abstraction was based on a analysis of abstracts by a assurance ecology accumulation administering the trial, the aggregation said.

Foster City, California-based SciClone markets Zadaxin, a analysis for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and assertive cancers. The RP101 abstraction was in the additional of three phases about appropriate by U.S. regulators afore they will accept a drug. The aggregation didn’t specify what the assurance console found.

Pancreatic cancer is sometimes called a "silent killer" because early pancreatic cancer often does not cause symptoms and the later symptoms are usually non-specific and varied.[5] Therefore, pancreatic cancer is often not diagnosed until it is advanced.[5] Common symptoms include:

* Pain in the upper abdomen that typically radiates to the back (seen in carcinoma of the body or tail of the pancreas)
* Loss of appetite and/or nausea and vomiting
* Significant weight loss
* Painless jaundice (yellow skin/eyes, dark urine) when a cancer of the head of the pancreas (about 60% of cases) obstructs the common bile duct as it runs through the pancreas. This may also cause pale-colored stool and steatorrhea.
* Trousseau sign, in which blood clots form spontaneously in the portal blood vessels, the deep veins of the extremities, or the superficial veins anywhere on the body, is sometimes associated with pancreatic cancer.
* Diabetes mellitus, or elevated blood sugar levels. Many patients with pancreatic cancer develop diabetes months to even years before they are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, suggesting that new onset diabetes in an elderly individual may be an early warning sign of pancreatic cancer.
* Clinical depression has been reported in association with pancreatic cancer, sometimes presenting before the cancer is diagnosed.

However, the mechanism for this association is not known.