We have completed the phase I portion of the clinical study evaluating the safety and toxicity of vandetanib combined with bortezomib in patients with advanced malignancies. The drug combination appears to be safe and we have embarked on the phase II portion of the study, which is a 2:1 randomization comparing the drug combination to vandetanib alone in the treatmet of patients with advanced MTC. We have not studied enough patients to tell if the combination is superior to vandetanib alone These studies are important because chemotherapy and radiotherapy are ineffective in patients with advanced MTC. We have recently showed that vandetanib is effective in patients with metastatic MTC. Based on the study the FDA approved the compound for the treatment of patients with advanced MTC. In the current and future studies we seek to show that new agents are more efficacious than vandetanib in the treatment of advanced MTC, especially when used in combinations, which based on preclinical studies, are shown to be more effective than single agent therapy. There is also no effective therapy for patients with anaplastic thyroid carcinoma and we hope to show that the phase I/II trial of crolibulin (EPC2407) plus cisplatin in adults with solid tumors with a focus on anaplastic thyroid cancer will show efficiacy.
